Proof of Concept

Since Cai Gua-Quaing's exhibition "I want to believe"opened last week at the Guggenheim I have learned that although no one in New York can pronounce his name everyone is anticipating going to "that Chinese artist-with-exploding-stuff's show."

While the rest of the Guggenheim features the theatricality and artifice of the Pirates of the Caribbean, “An Arbitrary History: River,” is Cai Gua-Quanig's version of Its a Small World in a yak skin boat. I mounted a wooden platform and was assisted by two docents into the one person vessel and instructed to propel the boat forward by using my arms to push off the side of the constructed river.

Initially I was surprised to find that Cai's boat ride to be the single thing in Manhattan that didn't have a line. It wasn't until I was in the boat that I discovered what all the rest of the observers, who were walking up to the items in the gallery in the normal art viewing fashion, had realized: that by entering the boat I now was part of the exhibition. As I gently glided down river, viewers regarded me in the same capacity as they did the cage of yellow canaries that was suspended above the river. I was now on display. This is the only place in the circular ascendancy of the Guggenheim were the viewer is a necessary, or even considered, party in the spectacle.


A random history is his self-staged mini-retrospective within the much larger spectacle of his vortex of stuffed animals, floating cars, and explosions. It is his own river through the Heart of Darkness. What is revealed is not Marlow's primal regression but a tranquil meditation a long a path of personal and cultural symbols. It is quaint and a bit pithy, but I was charmed by the slow rocking of my one person boat. It felt like a gift I was being granted by Cai Gua-Quanig as a respite, much like Its a Small World ride in it's comparative quietness to the phantasmagoria of the rest of Disneyland.

Labels: Cai Gua-Quaing