The FANTASTIC Cai Guo-Qiang show "I Want to Believe" at the Guggenheim is a ridonkulous breath-taking fun house with impossible installations like 9 full-size cars cascading down the towering rotunda with lighted tubes, a wave of 99 fake taxidermied wolves (of course), exploded gun powder paintings, deconstructed propaganda sculptures, tigers festooned with arrows and a raft ride down a flowing river, oh my! The distilled Mao-era propaganda sculptures, which are sometimes no more than just a piece of wood and brackets, somehow managed to be the perfect analogs to the originals, pictures of which were scattered about the floor. He assembled an entire shipwreck surrounded by thousands of broken ceramic dishes and little dieties. Incredible in scope and scale, brilliant originality, and diverse mediums made this easily my favorite art show of the year thus far.
Here's what some pro says: "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." I just know the show made me tingle.
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