were assembled in the powerful mechanical of a civic vision that disappeared along with for the public or for resting; so meeting rooms which function, in turn, as studies for later by surrounding them with a faint golden halo. way, he includes the public in the show, while casing, suspended in the air like a beached the age that produced it, the same vision that or the library alternate with a Japanese tea creations. The result of one of these is leaning «When I was young, the subject matter of my revealing the secrets of his workshop and the boat. The photographs taken during the con- drove Piano, Rogers and their friends to create room. All distributed across two floors. against one of the walls in the room where he artwork was more connected to the cosmos, I fragile control the artist wields over his mate- struction process are the only ones to recall a cultural machine completely open to commu- keeps the finished pieces. It isPalmyra , one of was looking for something more modest and rials. «Gunpowder is unpredictable. It’s a me- the presence of that shell on the shore, before nication and participation in the heart of Paris. The first impression felt by all visitors when the ignitions on show in The Spirit of Painting. more spiritual. As the years have gone by, I’ve dium that never submits, it’s uncontrollable … it disappeared beneath the cladding of reflect- The enclosure of the Botín Centre shows how they cross the threshold of Cai Guo-Qiang’s stu- Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado, curated by Alejan- developed and I’ve seen the changes, so I have Which is why you always have to keep a safe ed light. To install the cladding, the alumini- much of this vision has been lost in a game of dio is one of contained chaos, a creative force dro Vergara. It represents the Syrian city laid more enriching emotions and experiences as a distance. You have to give it the freedom to ex- um supports first had to be mounted and then poetic, private reflections. Only the platform, that tries to control what has been trying to es- waste by war, this time under a blaze of red and result.» press its true charisma.» It would be complete- the rectangular panels with the ceramic disks the stairways and the galleries continue to bear cape for a very long time; like the smoke after blue gunpowder. Opposite it, his version of Go- ly useless to introduce energy into a picture fixed in place. The windows were slotted in witness to that legacy, even though they are the explosions characterizing his works. Per- ya’s Third of May. This personal growth is reflected in his when it already has an energy of its own. In later. The operation for the bringing in the lift reduced to places from which to contemplate haps this is the essence of everything. chromatic palette, which has recently been that way, everything will have meaning. and hoisting it from a special crane had to be the extraordinary landscape and are no longer Cai began to use gunpowder almost from transformed with gunpowder coloured in carried out according to a technical ritual wor- spaces for the community to meet. Guo-Quiang (Quanzhou, China, 1957) is the beginning of his career because of the cre- blues, reds and yellows. It’s easy to spot ref- The Development and the Climax in this thy of the erection of a contemporary obelisk. currently working on the exhibition for the ative possibilities it granted him and because erences to El Greco or Velázquez in the tones visual poem are made up of those works that Once the building’s skeleton had been assem- The light that Piano projects onto the sur- Prado Museum, thanks to which he will be- of the spontaneity it allows him in the process flooding the works that have travelled to the he intends to create in situ during his stay in bled and the road tunnel excavated, work was face of the building transforms it into a mi- come the only living artist in the history of of executing a work. «It is a spiritual element Prado Museum. «They are noble colours. Col- Salón de Reinos. Alongside these, other panels undertaken in 2015 to extend the Pereda Gar- rage: the illusory hope in an architecture that the museum to have been commissioned for in itself», he maintains. But not everything is ours that have been understood from the soul that have already been completed, such as Last dens through concrete paths and the planting can still open up and be transparent, like a a project of this kind. It is also the first time left to chance. The methodical and the uncon- and which have been used from a position of Carnival, whose production was filmed by the of extra trees. machine transmitting information, just like an artist has set up his studio in the old Salón trollable exist side by side in the works he cre- modesty, but also with the certainty of a mas- director Isabel Coixet (the process she record- the avant-garde movements of the 1960s and de Reinos [Hall of Realms] at the former Buen ates with this flammable material. Drawings ter,» explains the contemporary artist today ed is included in the documentary shown in Emilio Botín’s aim was to offer his city a 1970s. The screen to one side, disfiguring the Retiro palace. This enclave constitutes a fun- are created by sprinkling the mineral onto the interpreting the classics. the last room of the exhibition). In this carni- community centre in a location of significance beauty of the envelope, evokes the intensity of damental part of the project already being canvas following the tracing of figures previ- val conceived by Cai, the last animals on Earth for his international financial activities. It is no the first cultural machines, with their violence conceived in the Chinese artist’s New York ously conceived. After ignition, the forms are His idiom is in the space where East meets that have survived the end of the world are coincidence that the new building was erected and fascination. However, this is diluted into studio. Cai is tackling the opportunity to work modified at the whim of the undisciplined West. Likewise, it intermingles cosmology, ori- copulating among themselves. In the mean- opposite the nineteenth-century headquarters a flicker perceptible among the treetops. That in a building full of so much history with a material and its behaviour; once the fuse has ental medicine and Chinese mythology. Per- time, in heaven, a group of cherubim bless of the Banco Santander located on the other the exterior covering has long since overtaken sense of responsibility and some trepidation: been lit, the powder is both the medium and haps that is why Guo-Qiang presents his arrival the earthly bacchanalia, as if it were a Rubens side of the gardens. No matter how much em- the structure is not simply a question of aes- «I hope the presence of the masters will guide also the painter. «The energy liberated on ig- at the Madrid gallery in four stages, the same painting. phasis is placed on the relationship between Pi- thetics, but rather another sign of the decline of and inspire me when I’m working there.» The nition includes light, smoke and sound. There ones structuring ancient Chinese poetry: As- ano’s building, the gardens and the water, there an ethical, political and constructive truth, one building’s memories, first as a throne room is another form of energy, however, that will cent, Development, Climax and Finale. He ad- In his dialogue with the Madrid museum, is no denying that this is also a cultural append- of whose greatest craftsmen and enthusiastic and subsequently an army museum for dec- remain forever sealed within the picture.» mits that he wants to hold an exhibition that the Chinese artist has reinterpreted the classi- age of the powerful bank. From that point of advocates has been Piano himself. ades, have impregnated its walls. Now more This relationship between the artist and ener- expresses not only his understanding of the cal oriental structure of separating the earth- ars view, even the division into two lobes separated By ROBERTO GargIANI than ever before, it is as if the gunpowder had gy leads him to experiment with it and place museum’s collection, but also the process of ly from the heavenly. In his case, the earthly ars 156 by public spaces reflects the architecture of the decided never to leave. two canvases in opposition to one another, understanding it. In other words, his dialogue world of sins is located beneath a heaven that 157 bank’s historic headquarter building, pierced one on top of the other. After the explosion, with the masters. Because of all this, the Prado is not a place for judgment but for celebration. right in the centre by a colossal triumphal arch The dialogue with the artists in the Prado the energy, the heat and the temperature are exhibition offers the path taken by the artist Around eight more paintings will be created open to the city traffic (in some of his initial has already begun, as we said, from the library absorbed by the upper canvas, thus producing from study to experimentation with the mate- expressly in the Salón de Reinos; their dimen- designs, Piano had aligned the aerial walkway in the building where he usually works on the two paintings: one abstract and another, more rial, ending in the final creation generated after sions will match those of the original paintings with this arch).