The awe-inspiring gunpowder drawing "Skybound UFO and Shrine", with its divine eye like appearance, is one of Cai Guo-Qiang's most admired and lauded works on paper winning immediate acclaim when it was first exhibited at the Demeter: Tokachi International Contemporary Art Exhibition, in Obihiro, Hokkaido, Japan in 2002 in which fourteen international artists took part.

The drawing is the original plan for a major event as part of Cai's 'Project for Extraterrestrials' that he conceived for the Obihiro Racetrack as part of the art exhibition. He planned to have a UFO-shaped airship, 30 meters in diameter and 10 meters high, float above the racetrack. A vermillion shrine, from the Japanese Shinto religion, was to be attached beneath. The blimp would have been filled with gas so that it would rise gently into the sky. Once there, magic and spiritualism would have been created with the contrast of the white UFO, with the red shrine attached hovering in the serene blue sky. At night it was planned to light the objects as if they were bathed in a quiet yellowish light of the moon or the hopeful colors of a rainbow.

But, of course, quietness, calmness and serenity are not hallmarks of Cai Guo-Qiang's work. A child of Fujian province, and reared in the Taoism of his native province, Cai is inextricably attracted to the dualities present in life. A strong belief in Taoism is that everything has its opposite. Ying and yang, calmness and turbulence, peacefulness and violence, destruction and construction, all opposites must exist and interplay with one another. And because of this, life is unpredictable and necessarily spontaneous. So, on the last night of the exhibition, Cai had planned one of his signature explosion events for his UFO ship, and "Skybound UFO and Shrine" is the drawing plan of this fiery spectacle.

Roman candles were to be attached to the bottom of the shrine and on the outside edge of the UFO. As they shot flames diagonally up and around, the UFO would have been transformed into a crown of fire, while the shrine would have shot flames onto the ground like a rocket at launch. As the spectators watched, it would seem that the horizon was expanding as if some mystical light was appearing, emphasized by the vertical lines of the burning ship. For Cai, the work was to symbolize the power of the pristine and fertile earth as it overcame its subjection and exploitation by humans in the past. It was also to represent the transplantation of religion and culture, an integral part of human history as the UFO carried the Shinto shrine to new worlds.

However, the event as planned never took place. As if reinforcing and verifying Cai's philosophical outlook on life, the unpredictable unleashing of unseen forces at any moment, a major typhoon ravaged Hokkaido while the work was being installed. The blimp was damaged and unable to fly as planned. As a profound follower of the Taoist belief that destruction brings construction, death brings new life, powerfulness brings peace, Cai responded magnificently to the apparent setback and modified his original plans. The balloon was repaired and partially inflated so that it rose as a dome from the ground. He drew with gunpowder all around the dome and then laid out a 4, 500 meter long fuse around the inside and outside of the UFO ship.

Because of the typhoon there was constant rain everyday of the exhibition. However, on the day of the replanned event it stopped raining. As evening approached the clouds cleared on the horizon and a magnificent blood-red sunset with silver white clouds occurred creating a very dramatic atmosphere for the event. As the fuse was lit, a roaring white fire sped around the outside of the UFO like a dragon racing through the sky. Simultaneously, the fuse inside caught, and a mystical, puff of orange light filled the blimp. In all, the event lasted 30 seconds, however it was met with an awe-struck gasp from the audience, and Cai, himself has claimed this as one of his most successful gunpowder events.

"Skybound UFO and Shrine" is a splendid representation of the originally planned event. It is also a stunning example of Cai's mastery of using gunpowder to create powerful, energetic and magnetic images on paper. The outline of the UFO ship is clearly seen and bursting forth in every direction are rays of incredible energy and force, as would have happened with the fireworks on the ship. In the center of the oval shape are the scorch marks of the flames from the shrine which would have made contact with the earth. The drawing though transcends its original purpose as a plan of the event, and instead is a magnificent work of art itself. With its energy bursting forth from an oval center, it seems to be a cosmological event, a roaring galaxy floating through time. It also stirs evocative ideas of the cosmic divine eye watching over everything. One of Cai's obsessions, and a central belief in his Taoist system, is that of the seen and unseen, that we life in a mystical world and are surrounded by forces both seen and unseen. "Skybound UFO and Shrine" has become an iconic representation of this belief.

Cai grew up in Quanzhou during the turbulent period of the Cultural Revolution. His father was a traditional Chinese painter, and Cai was classically trained in ink and brushwork. However, from a young age he was immersed in the traditional Taoism of his grandmother. He was much more attracted to the chaoticism and spiritualism of the old beliefs than the rational and constrained beliefs of his father's Confucianism. Finding both traditional art and society in general to be stifling and stultifying, he left his home province and entered the Shanghai Drama Institute. He encountered the avant-garde movement and his works from this time deal with profound subjects, and are often reflections on socio-political events. However, Cai still found his thought processes to be controlled and bound, and so, he left for Japan. Japan was in many ways to become a spiritual home for him, and it was here that he first began to use explosives in creating art.

Cai was never happy using a brush and pigment for his art. As a young man he experimented with many techniques to stretch the boundaries of what an artist could do on a flat surface. For example he covered a canvas with paint and then pointed a fan on it, trying to recreate the appearance of a typhoon. Quanzhou was the center of the fireworks industry in China, so Cai was very familiar with this fiery substance. It was while living in Japan, where he embraced the culture, but as a foreigner always remained an outsider, an alien, that the properties of gunpowder began to appeal to him. It's tremendous power, energy and beauty, destroyed on the one hand, but created terrifying beauty on the other. Out of destruction, came new creations. It was the perfect medium for him to portray his beliefs and sensibility. However, gunpowder is literally destructive, so at first Cai, planned events using gunpowder such as the UFO and Shrine event at Obihiro. He then experimented with it on various media, settling on paper, as it is the most sensitive to burning and enables the creation of a subtle range of hues, capturing the momentary release of energy.

In 1995 Cai moved to New York, and began to win acclaim for his explosive events. Often these events had political or social overtones, and especially after 9/11, his works often explore man's inhumanity to his fellow men, and man's general destructiveness. However, Cai has commented that when working in the USA or Europe, he thinks of social issues, but when in Japan, he always thinks of the universe. So, in 2002, when returning to Japan to create "Skybound UFO and Shrine", Cai was returning to his spiritual home, where he feels his deepest connection to the universe and where he plugs into the energy of that universe. It was in Japan that he began his 'Project for Extraterrestrials', large-scale explosion projects that could be seen by extraterrestrials from space. This spiritual connectedness is magnificently represented in the cosmological explosiveness of "Skybound UFO and Shrine", and makes it one of Cai's most admired works.