Gunpowder, ink and Golden Yuan Bills on paper

38×28 cm. 15×11 in.

Signed in Chinese and abbreviation and dated on bottom left; signed in English on bottom right
PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Cai Guo-Qiang and Kevin Tsai

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 Travelling Through Time and Space in Blasts
Cai Guo-Qiang's Golden Yuan Bills Combined Transience with Eternity

Born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, Cai Guo-Qiang is one of today's most renowned contemporary Chinese artists. 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. Since 2008, he has held large-scale solo exhibitions in world-class art museums, such as the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum of Singapore, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, and the National New Museum of Fine Arts in Tokyo, making him an internationally acclaimed artist.

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. 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.

Golden Yuan Bills represent the chaotic economy in 1948 when inflation was severe. 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 Golden Yuan Bills was blasted awake. The bills, initially in a single form with low purchasing power, 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.

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