Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang

"Playing with gun powder set me free" - Cai Gup-Qiang Who doesn't like fireworks? He witnessed the Chinese cultural revolution launched by the CCP leader Mao Zedong during his tween to his early teen years. He had known fireworks as 'good thing', a part of celebrations before the revolution but revolution changes his perception. He saw gunpowder being used to make explosives to kill people. His father was a famous calligrapher. Art runs into his blood. His work includes taxidermy, large sculptures but he is known for the oil paintings that are swapped with post-immolation markings. The calligraphy explosion. Putting gun powder onto his own oil paintings and then blowing them off. High levels of smog and 16,000 dead pigs floating in Huangpu river inspired him to work on what he called The Ninth Wave named after a Russian painting by the same name about the ninth disastrous destructive tsunami wave. His passion for fireworks and his artistic virtuosity gave birth to artistic explosions such as Transient Rainbow, Elegy (biodegradable colored clouds), Remembrance (Holi like colors sprays), Consolation (colored weeping willow like shape) fireworks. But his best work ever was a Sky Ladder, a ladder shaped strand of fireworks stretching upward for more than half a kilometer in the sky. This documentary shows the passion and planning, the story and experiences, the hard work and problems and the moment of the Sky Ladder. A great watch.

Not just a catalogue or celebration of this brilliant artist's work, but examines his relationship with his family and homeland, the navigation required to work in communist China, the trappings of success and fame, and accusations of selling out. Very interesting and unexpectedly emotional.

A well-written documentary film focusing on Cai Guo-Qiang's brilliant project. The well-informed documentary provided adequate information showcasing the forethought of the visually appealing sky ladder project, his past art pieces, and a brief look at Cai Guo-Qiang's relationship with his family and how he thrived to become a brilliant contemporary artist. The cinematic camera shots capturing Cai Guo-Qiang's past projects were visually alluring and the showcasing of the planning of the sky ladder project throughout the documentary film was captured perfectly. We get a clear visual understanding of how Cai Guo-Qiang desires to achieve his artistic dream. A fantastic job from the director Kevin Macdonald on a fascinating documentary film.

One of the best signs to gauge your engagement in this documentary is whether you find the idea of an artist whose main medium is fireworks and explosions original and brilliant or not. Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese-born artist from an artistic family, his father did traditional calligraphy and painting and, during the Cultural Revolution, somewhat found himself in hot water for it. As a reactionary posture towards this social context and the personal one stemming from their complicated relationship, along with the symbolic weight of fireworks and gunpowder as iconic Ancient Chinese inventions, Guo-Qiang rejected these traditional mediums and embraced this unexpected new one.

"Sky Ladder" does an excellent job of showing these personal and cultural dimensions to his work, specially in following the development of the titular performance. A conceptual pyrotechnic ladder extending hundreds of meters into the air tethered by a balloon, already failed on 3 attempts, Sky Ladder seems to represent Guo-Qiang's most personal work. The narrative of the film isn't entirely dedicated to Sky Ladder but it remains a constant topic and is crucial to the third act as it mostly deals with the 4th attempt to execute it, this time in a small Chinese fishing village significant to the Cai family for a number of reasons. Along the way, the documentary lets us know plenty about the artist's personal life, his early work, what art critics and personalities think of him and his work both in the East and West as well as give him plenty of opportunities to show his candor in one-on-one interviews. One such interview of note is the one where he questions why his work for the Chinese government (he designed the fireworks shows for the 2008 Olympic Ceremonies) is questioned while most Western artists' isn't, despite no government being free from sin.

The documentary is extensive and thorough (as is usually the case with director Kevin Macdonald), dealing with the politics of China as influence and sometimes foil for this artistic creation. An emotional narrative is also followed to show the artist's relation to his art becoming hugely successful and how this might clash with his original iconoclastic vision, as well as moments with his family, friends and collaborators. The profile is completed by showing that Guo-Qiang's art consists of more than fireworks displays, we see plenty of his museum-packing multimedia installations as well as his also-iconic "gunpowder paintings". Overall, "Sky Ladder" works as a very complete profile on an interesting, innovative artist, without leaving his human size unexplored and as a very small window to peek into the massive landscape of modern China and specifically its art, which has produced figures as well-known as Zhang Yimou, Ai Weiwei and yes, Cai Guo-Qiang.

As "Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang" (2016 release from the UK; 79 min.) opens, we are briefly introduced to Cai, as he reflects on his roots in China, where gunpowder (a/k/a "fire medicine") was invented over 1000 years ago. We then go to "Bath, England, 1994" where Cai tries to mount the sky ladder project, but fails... At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from Oscar-winning Scottish director Kevin Macdonald. Here he seems to have been given unfettered access to Chinese performance artist Cai Guo-Qiang, best known for his sophisticated fireworks displays (2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, anyone?) but as it turns out Cai is so much more than that. The documentary works great and the results are exquisite, with stunning visuals to boot. The harder questions are not avoided (such as when Cai does another fireworks show for the opening of APEC 2014 in Beijing, knowing fully well that his work is used for political propaganda purposes). And as for the sky ladder project: it reminds me in scope and ambition of the works by the recently departed Christo, who never saw a building he couldn't wrap. Bottom line: this is one amazing and thoroughly enjoyable documentary.

I missed "Sky Ladder" when it originally came out in 2016. Neflix just recommended it to me based on my viewing habits. Thanks Netflix! So glad I caught this. If you are in the mood for an entertaining documentary about the life and times of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, and containing some out of this world footage, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.