2025/02/14 High School by Annette

High school students are used to dealing with “primary sources” so I thought it is a good idea to introduce some of Cai’s own words into the tour:

INVISIBLE POPPY
“Maybe my work, sometimes, is like the poppy flower. It’s very beautiful, yet because of circumstances, it also represents a poison to society.”
What did he mean?
“Gunpowder has always been used for human destruction. But Cai creates beautiful drawings for visual pleasure. He sed the poppy flower as a symbol in his work. The poppy is a beautiful flower to look at, but it can also remind one of the drug trade that is destructive for mankind. Here, the appearance of the flower is nice, but something sinister lurks in the background.”
This picture also lends itself to the question:
Why does Cai call his work paintings?
color, line, positive/negative space, etc.

MONTAGNE SAINTE-VICTORE
“Dragons have symbolized the power of nature on earth and in the universe. They are also an incarnation of the dreams of humans to fly freely through the skies and oceans beyond physical limitations. Now, the fire dragon ascends higher in the sky from the rock slope rising from the earth as an undulation of a dragon, carrying the hope of contact between humans and minds beyond the earth. In addition, it represents an action of the universal spirit of humans seeking a return to the embrace of the universe.”

NON- BRAND
Cai referred to some of the modernist artists (ie Rothko) as developing distinctive “brands” that gained them recognition and in doing so, became commodities.
How would you describe Rothko’s brand?
What other popular figures in our culture have developed brands? 
In response Cai created a new technique to sandwich gunpowder (his “brand”) between a sheet of glass and a mirror. He says, “I used mirrors and glass to create a few large-scale iconic pieces. I deliberately placed their “brand” (referring to another artist) onto them and then used gunpowder to explode them. Actually, gunpowder has become a brand of mine.”
He titled his works “Non-Brand”