Artwork Description

Title: , Golden Vouchers - fortune charms and peace charms
Artist: Cai Guo-Qiang (蔡国强)
Date: n.d.
Medium: Mixed media on paper
Dimensions: 24.8 x 16.9 in (63 x 43 cm)

1. Artwork Identification
This striking mixed media work by Cai Guo-Qiang features two Chinese banknotes adhered to a sheet of paper marked by intentional burn holes, soot trails, and scorched edges—evidence of the artist’s signature use of gunpowder. Golden Vouchers – Fortune Charms and Peace Charms invokes themes of value, fragility, and transformation, blurring boundaries between destruction and beauty. The currency notes—a 100 Yuan note with portraiture and an earlier Central Bank note—are juxtaposed in pristine clarity against the charred surrounding paper. The work is signed boldly by the artist in red ink at lower right, with mounting tape remaining visible, adding to its conceptual rawness.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Cai Guo-Qiang is renowned for his experimental work with gunpowder, both in ephemeral outdoor explosions and static drawings. Rooted in conceptualism and performance art, his aesthetic draws heavily from Daoist philosophy, Chinese calligraphy, and post-Maoist ideology. In this piece, the scorched composition evokes both shanshui painting traditions and contemporary conceptual strategies. Cai’s signature visual tension—between destruction and preservation, East and West—is vividly present here.

3. Historical Context
Born in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Cai grew up amidst political upheaval, martial parades, and celebratory fireworks—an experience that deeply informed his embrace of gunpowder as a medium. Trained in stage design in Shanghai, his work integrates spatial sensitivity and theatrical spectacle with deep cultural symbolism. This piece reflects broader questions raised by China’s late-20th-century economic rise: the fetishization of currency, the burnished legacy of revolution, and the fragility of prosperity.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon request.

5. Condition and Conservation
The work is in very good condition. The deliberate burn marks and distressed edges are intrinsic to the work’s conceptual framework. It is professionally framed and preserved under glass.

6. Artistic Significance
Cai Guo-Qiang is a globally celebrated figure whose work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. He is one of the few contemporary Chinese artists to achieve both critical and institutional success on the world stage. This work is a fine example of his smaller-scale pieces, where the precision of his gunpowder technique and the philosophical depth of his iconography converge. It embodies his central themes of volatility, transformation, and cultural dialogue, and offers collectors a powerful entry point into the artist’s celebrated practice.