Nine Chevrolets and Neon Lights

Through May 28, the Guggenheim Museum in New York boasts nine white Chevrolet cars suspended from varying heights in its Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda . Upon entering the museum, viewers' "first experience is one of assault, one of confrontation, of tremendous violence" as they take in these cars which "simulate a car bomb explosion" according to Alexandra Munroe, the senior curator of Asian art for the Guggenheim. That explosion, she says, begins on the "rotunda floor, spits in a fury of explosion, tumbles through the void space, ending up on Ground Six."

The artist behind this display, Cai Guo-Giang, is one of the most powerful operating anywhere in the world today, according to Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim's director.

If you care to push aside the thick art-gobbledy-talk emerging from the mouths of elite curators, check out this link to Cai's exhibition in New York http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/cai.html

It appears that Cai (who was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, and studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute) has circumvented the preposterous nature of western materialism and propensity towards glamour and bright lights to create an awesome scene that asks the viewer to forget gravity and the drive toward acquiring stuff. Instead, he asks his audience to recognize the beauty of the stuff itself when it is arranged artistically. I think Cai wants us to rethink our desires. Nine white cars suspended from various heights in a stark white six-level rotunda, each adorned with colorful lights shooting out from it, could possibly reawaken the minds of the average American consumer. We can do recognize the beauty of living and the aesthetics of culture.

Here's more about Cai's work around the world: http://www.caiguoqiang.com/shell.php?sid=2ell.php?sid=2.