A t once explosive and majestic, raw and primal yet exquisitely elegant, Furious Tiger harnesses the medium of gunpowder as a metaphor for destruction, cathartic creation and fusion between humanity, beast, and nature. Born in 1957, Cai graduated with a BFA in stage design from the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 1985. Right from the beginning, Cai’s art was concerned with a desire to utilize the power of natural forces. Initially, the artist laid oil paint on canvas and blasted it with an electric fan, shaping the movement of paint with wind. Cai began experimenting with gunpowder in the early 1980s, lighting gunpowder with fuses directly onto his canvases. Moving to Japan in 1986, Cai honed the technical specifics of his hanabi (“gunpowder”) technique, developing a singular process that sublimely balanced chance and control. In lieu of brush and pigment, Cai achieves a magical alchemy of artistic, philosophical and historical elements, finding rhythm and form in the midst of disorder and primal chaos. In the present work, Cai manifests creation via destruction, in which the silhouette of a tiger emerges from the depths of gunpowder ashes. Cai’s thinking is primarily concerned with the question of qi – through his gunpowder technique, Cai wishes to “allow qi to circulate between the real and the virtual, like the breathing of the universe” (“To Dare to Accomplish Nothing,” Cai Guo-Qiang, Fondation Cartier and Thames & Hudson, 2000, pp. 117-135). As an artist who paints without painting, the sophistication, innovation and significance of Cai's gunpowder oeuvre rivals that of all his brush-wielding colleagues whilst forging a revolutionary new order for global artistic abstraction.

《一隻猛虎》雄偉而極具爆炸性，原始、粗獷而又優雅，將火藥作為創作媒介隱喻破壞、宣洩的創造及天、人、獸之間的融合。蔡國強生於1957年，1985年在上海戲劇學院以舞台設計學士畢業。從一開始，他就對利用自然力量的藝術格外留意。最初，蔡國強將油彩塗在畫布上，然後用電風扇強力吹動， 以控制顏料的移動。1980年代初，他開始試驗利用火藥創作，將帶有保險絲的火藥直接在畫布上燃點。1986年，蔡國強移居日本，潛心試煉「花火」技術，開發創新技巧，完美地平衡爆炸效果的隨機性和受控程度。他以此代替畫筆和顏料，實現了一種兼具藝術性、哲思及歷史元素的神奇煉金術，在原始混亂中尋找節奏和形式。本作通過破壞來體現創造，老虎的輪廓浮現自火藥灰燼深處。他希望通過其火藥技術「讓氣運行在真實和虛擬之間，如宇宙呼吸」（《敢於無成》， 蔡國強，卡地亞基金會和泰晤士與哈德遜基金會，2000年，頁117-135）。蔡氏不用畫筆作畫，但他的火藥作品精巧、創新而意義深長，可與一眾用畫筆創作的同儕媲美，同時為全球抽象藝術創造了革命性的新秩序。