Cai Guo-Qiang is one of six contemporary artists invited to explore the Guggenheim’s collection as a curator of the exhibition “Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection” . As part of his presentation, Cai produced new gunpowder paintings in homage to iconic abstract works in the Guggenheim collection. He says, “I used mirrors and glass to create a few large-scale iconic pieces. I deliberately placed their ‘brand’ onto them and then used gunpowder to explode them. Actually, gunpowder has become a brand of mine. After these masters’ works are baptized by gunpowder, their brand undergoes a kind of deconstruction.”