Transparent Monument

In the Spring of 2006, Cai Guo-Qiang, the Chinese-born, New York-based artist known for his ambitious explosion works and large, theatrical sculptures and installations–his most notorious work, commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art soon after 9/11, was a barrage of exploding fireworks that hovered over the city, showing that ‘something used for destruction and terror can also be constructive, beautiful, and healing’–was invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific exhibition in the museum’s roof garden. Those four works are featured in-depth here, including a tall glass sculpture surrounded by replicas of dead birds; a stone relief depicting post-9/11 vignettes; a pair of life-sized cast-resin crocodiles pierced with thousands of sharp objects confiscated at airport-security checkpoints; and “Clear Sky Black Cloud,” an ephemeral work consisting of an actual black cloud that would hover over the roof garden and then burst into the sky at regular intervals, bleeding afterwards into nothingness.