I just thought this image is beautiful!

Art 21 Reaction

I was super excited about seeing Cai Guo-Qiang. I was not disappointed! I had never heard of anyone doing paintings out of explosions, and it was really cool! The effect was awesome and I loved that you never really knew what you would get! I loved his pieces of arrows or something sticking out of the tigers and cars. They were great because it caused the influence on the audience that he intended--pain. It really was uncomfortable to look at the tigers especially.

Oliver Herring was AWESOME!!! I had never heard of him before, and just the opening scene inspired me! It made me want to do something similar--like a video of somekind. I also loved loved loved the photographs of the men with paint on their face. It was really cool to see how he did it and then watch him while he took the photographs and see how he captured the vulnerability he was talking about. I could totally see it! The photographs were stunning.

Art 21

I LOVED Judy Pfaff's piece she did, "Buckets of Rain". I cannot imagine doing a piece as large as that! I thought the tree roots was an amazing idea. They turned out beautiful! I'm am sorry that this piece was the result of her losing so many loved ones in the same year. But she made an awesome piece because of it!

I also liked Mark Dion's piece he did with the rats. It was gross and disgusting, but I love the history and research he did to give the piece more history and meaning. Also the "Neukom Vivarium", was great too! I guess my favorite part about it was when he said that it was about the difficulty of recreating what nature does on its own. I fell in love with the piece after I realized what it was about--because it is so true! All the machines and contraptions he had to set up and spend money on and build himself, nature just does it on its own--just a normal circle of life kind of thing.

I LOVE this package design! it's amazing! but kinda creepy too :)

Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1, New York.
His work is both scholarly and politically charged. Accomplished in a variety of media, Cai began using gunpowder in his work to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995 he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, leading to the development of his signature explosion events. These projects, while poetic and ambitious at their core, aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe.
For his work, Cai draws on a wide variety of materials, symbols, narratives, and traditions—elements of feng shui, Chinese medicine and philosophy, images of dragons and tigers, roller coasters, computers, vending machines, and gunpowder.

Cai Guo-Qiang

So when I first saw this online, I didn't actually know what it was. It's was just kinda like, "oh cool" and shrug my shoulders. But then I found out what it was made of--wolves. WOLVES! That's so freaking cool! I love it! How he has them start outside the door, then run in that arc to hit the glass wall. It's amazing!


99 life-sized replicas of wolves and glass wall; Wolves: papier mâché, plaster, fiberglass, resin, and painted hide

Artists of Our Day

I think that some artists probably are making fun. Some are mocking commercialism, some are mocking the audience, and some are probably even making fun of themselves. But I think that some are just doing things out of defiance. You know how when you're a little kid (or for me it's when I'm an adult) and someone tells you that you are not supposed to do something, you want to do it even more. I think that is how some artists are reacting. Artists are met with some kind of expectation for how they are supposed to do things, what they are supposed to do, and who they are doing it for. But (being an artist myself) I can understand not wanting to meet any of those expectations and just doing whatever it is I want. In some ways, maybe, doing the exact opposite of what is expected simply because it is expected. Like I said earlier--defiance. Defiance of the normal, defiance of standards, defiance of money. But because we are humans, that rebellion of sorts is viewed as genius. So, rebellion, in a way, promotes progress. That rebellion moves the artists into different ways. It causes people to try new things and view things in different ways than before. This is what starts new art movements-- this is what makes art art.