CHAPTER 13. Explosive Beauty: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese born, New York based contemporary artist who works in a wide variety of media but has become best known for his signature use of gunpowder to create drawings and paintings. This chapter focuses on his recent “painting” practice using colored pyrotechnic smokes and gunpowder. It describes briefly their history and composition, the techniques used by the artist to paint and draw with them, and attempts to predict their aging behavior based on artificial aging and MFT studies performed by the authors.