17th Biennale of Sydney
  • Daniel Crooks, Static No.12 (seek stillness in movement), 2009–10 Detail of HD video (RED transferred to Blu-ray), dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery. Copyright © Daniel Crooks 2009
  • Kutlug Ataman, Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / Journey to the Moon, 2009 (detail), still photography, 31 x 41 cm. Courtesy of Francesca Minini, Milan and the artist
  • Lara Baladi, Perfumes & Bazaar, The Garden of Allah, 2006 (detail), digital collage, 560 x 248 cm, technical production and printing, Factum Arte, Madrid. Courtesy the artist. Copyright Lara Baladi
  • Kataryzana Kozyra, Summertale, 2008 (detail), DVD production still, 20 mins, prod. Zacheta National Gallery of Art Copyright artist, courtesy ZAK I BRANICKA Gallery. Photograph: M. Olivia Soto
  • Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Manet’s Dejeuner sur I’herbe 1862 1863 and the Thai villagers group II, 2008-09 (detail), from ‘The Two Planets Series’, photograph and video, 110 x 100 cm; 16 mins. Courtesy the artist and 100 Tonson Gallery, Bangkok
  • Cai Guo-Qiang, Inopportune: Stage One, 2004 (detail), nine cars and sequenced multichannel light tubes, dimensions variable. Collection of Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Robert M. Arnold, in honour of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2006, installation view at MASS MoCA, North Adams, 2004. Courtesy Cai Studio. Photograph: Hiro Ihara
  • Kent Monkman, The Death of Adonis, 2009 (detail), acrylic on canvas, 182.9 x 304.8 cm. Courtesy the artist and TrépanierBaer Gallery, Calgary
  • Christopher Pease, Law of Reflection, 2008–09 (detail), oil on canvas, 123 x 214 cm. Private collection. Courtesy the artist and Goddard de Fiddes, Contemporary Art, Perth. Photograph: Tony Nathan
  • AES+F, The Feast of Trimalchio, 2009 (detail of video still), nine-channel video installation, 19 mins. Courtesy the artists; Triumph Gallery, Moscow; and Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
  • Tsang Kin-Wah, The First Seal – It Would Be Better If You Have Never Been Born…, 2009, digital video projection and sound installation, 6:41 mins, 513 x 513 cm. Courtesy the artist
  • Wang Qingsong, Competition, 2004 (detail), c-print, 170 x 300 cm. Courtesy the artist
  • Mark Wallinger, Hymn, 1997 (detail of video still), video, sound, 4:52 mins, edition of 10 and 1 artist proof. Courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London

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Cai Guo-Qiang, Inopportune: Stage One, Biennale of Sydney installation



About Cai Guo-Qiang
Born 1957 in Quanzhou City, China
Lives and works in New York, USA

Cai Guo-Qiang has a history of making works of extraordinary beauty from violent beginnings; most famously using gunpowder, fireworks and explosions. Of his
sculptural installations, Cai’s Inopportune: Stage One (2004) is one of the most challenging and spectacular. The installation of nine cars appears arrested in an
animated sequence of explosion; each identical white vehicle frozen in an arc of detonation, blast, launch, tumbling, gravitational return, and rest. The cars are
pierced with pulsing rods of light that simultaneously suspend the cars like wings and penetrate them like blades, signifying a coexisting violence and beauty. This
work, along with a related video installation Illusion (2004), showing a car that appears to blow up while ghosting through New York’s TimesSquare, dominates the  vast Turbine Hall on Cockatoo Island.

This film was commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney. Photography and production by Grant Stewart, assisted by the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.

Supported by the Nelson Meers Foundation
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