Gunpowder, ink and Golden Yuan Bills on paper

36.5×28 cm. 14 3/8×11 in.

Signed in Chinese and English on bottom left; signed in English on bottom right

Lot 100 Golden Yuan Bills- Numinous Talismans by Cai Guo-Qiang is accompanied by a certificate, a photograph and a CD-ROM documenting the production of the work.
PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

Note: Cai Guo-Qiang exploded 66 sets of Golden Yuan Bills that were issued by the National Government of the Republic of China in 1948 live in 29 March 2005 in MOCA Taipei and sold the 66 pieces through a TV platform on the next day. This piece is one of them.

The Magic of Gunpowder Blasting, Breaking the Boundaries of Art
Cai Guo-Qiang's Magic of Gunpowder Through the Past and Present

Born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, Cai Guoqiang is one of today's most renowned contemporary Chinese artists. Since 2008, he has held large-scale solo exhibitions and retrospective exhibitions in world-class art museums, such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum of Singapore, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the National Palace of China in Beijing, and the National New Museum of Fine Arts in Tokyo, making him an internationally acclaimed artist. By using gunpowder, a special product of his hometown Quanzhou, as a substitute for paint, he has broken the boundaries of traditional art and created many shocking works between the controllability of gunpowder and its suddenness.

Golden Yuan Bills- Numinous Talismans comes from a special art event that Cai Guo-Qiang made in 2005. He collected 66 sets of Golden Yuan Bills issued by the National Government of the Republic of China in 1948. He placed gunpowder to form magic symbols on these bills and blasted them. Golden Yuan Bills represent the chaotic economy in 1948 when inflation was so severe that 400 million gold circular coupons could only buy 80kg of rice. Cai Guo-Qiang, who specialises in dialogue with history, lays out the 66 Golden Yuan Bills as if performing a religious ritual, applying gunpowder to them solemnly and reverently as if channelling the energy of the spiritual world to trigger a reaction in the material world. In the blast of gunpowder, the historical memory of the two 100,000 Golden Yuan Bills was blasted awake. The bills, initially in a single form with low purchasing power and framed in Chinese Chupi paper, were transformed by the magic of Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder into a symbol of "wealth and peace". The heat of the burning flame fuses the culture, words and historical memory they represent into one, which is then transformed into a playful, bold artistic statement that speaks of Cai Guo-Qiang's unconventional, creative exploration through ancient and modern times. He broke the boundaries of time, art taste, media and inherent values.

On the day following his work's completion, Cai and famous Taiwanese host Kevin Tsai sold Golden Yuan Bills signed by both of them on a TV shopping show, challenging the stereotype that artworks are unattainable, and questioning how wealth, faith, and value were made.

Price estimate:
HKD 50,000 - 80,000
USD 6,400 – 10,300

Auction Result:
HKD: 60,000