This August, just in time for the Olympics, the U.S. will open a brand new embassy in Beijing. The $550m complex, designed by the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will be one of the State Department’s largest foreign construction projects to date. To mark the occasion, the State Department plans to display master works by 18 American and Chinese contemporary artists.
Cai Guo-Qiang has literally exploded the accepted parameters of art making in our time. Drawing freely from–among others–ancient mythology, Taoist cosmology, extraterrestrial observations, gunpowder-related technology, and methods of terrorist violence, …
