Cai Guo-Qiang Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015–2025

‘Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015–2025’ heralds Cai Guo-Qiang’s return to London after more than two decades, presenting over 30 works that chart a decade of experimentation with gunpowder. Shifting between registers of the figurative and the abstract, the works negotiate a set of enduring dialectics within Cai’s practice: creation and deconstruction, control and chance – energies catalysed by the volatile properties of his chosen material. These tensions open a conceptual field in which Eastern philosophical tenets converge with Western art-historical lineages, and where motifs drawn from the natural world speak to vaster cosmic rhythms.

Dates

26 September – 9 November 2025

Location

White Cube Bermondsey

144–152 Bermondsey Street

London SE1 3TQ

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