Guo-Qiang Cai

I am working on a model of the Guggenheim's Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. I am standing inside the model like a giant, so as to have the best position for configuring the hanging cars that make up Inopportune: Stage One. The finished installation will consist of nine full-sized cars, six of which will hang through the open space of the rotunda. Unlike many artists who have shown at the museum and kept the rotunda clean and empty, I want to fill it with something massive. In the actual piece, seven cars will have light tubes coming out of their bodies, representing the light from an explosion, which illuminates the dichotomy between beauty and destruction. The series of cars symbolizes a suicide car bomb exploding and falling through the air. The first car in the series is normal, without light tubes, representing the car before the bomb goes off. After the bomb in detonated, the colors of the tubes change to correspond to the progression in the explosion. Hanging these cars vertically will be one of the most challenging technical feats of my career. As you can imagine, the positions of the cars have to be calculated to the minutest detail to ensure the security of the installation. Even though the concept addresses discomfort, it should be the representation of terrorism that elicits this response—not the fact that they are hanging above the museumgoers' heads.