"Ascending" by Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang is the guy who did the fireworks for the Beijing olympics. He likes explosions and military history. He does incredible pieces with cars or bones or big things suspended from strings. This is a pen drawing, with a ladder that's cropped at the top of the canvas, the crop adding a sense of immediacy and motion. There are aerie spirits floating around it, and there's something like a ball of string. It's as if we're looking at the heavens from below.
It's not a neat drawing. There are splotches. It's as if the image has been rained on. The splotches complicate the meaning of the work. It prevents the image from being too picturesque.
The things in the image are heavenly, but also down to earth. Guo-Qiang is an artist that loves motion, but this drawing is a deviation from his ordinary form. It's in motion, but not really.