Cai Guo-Qiang, Head On, 2006
Deutsche Bank Collection, Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG
Installed at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008
© Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation New York. Photo by David Heald
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Cai Guo-Qiang, Head On, installation view, Deutsche Guggenheim, 2006
Photo: Mathias Schormann
© Cai Guo-Qiang; Deutsche Guggenheim
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Cai Guo-Qiang, Head On, 2006, installation at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
Photo: Hiro Ihara, Courtesy Cai Studio
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A pack of 99 life-sized wolves charging towards a glass wall in a high arc—even at its first presentation in Berlin, Cai Guo-Qiang's dynamic installation Head On made a huge splash. The commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim was also on view in the spring of 2008 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where the wolves raced up Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic spiral-formed ramp. The museum showed Head On as part of its major retrospective Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe. Cathleen McGuigan, art critic for the American magazine Newsweek, was so impressed by the powerful work that she named it her "Favorite Cultural Moment" of 2008. Explaining the reasons behind her choice, she connected Cai's enigmatic work on the one hand to the financial crisis, in which "that wild pack of Wall Streeters finally hit the wall." At the same time, she remarked, they impart an almost philosophical message — "that every living creature is racing toward oblivion." Anyone who missed Head on in New York and Berlin has the chance starting March 17 to see the spectacular installation in Bilbao, where the Guggenheim Museum will be showing Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe through September 13, 2009.
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