White Cube at TEFAF New York 2026

White Cube is pleased to return to TEFAF New York with a solo booth of works by New York-based artist Cai Guo-Qiang, comprising a selection of his bird gunpowder paintings made between 2018 and the present.

These vibrant works depict avian flocks in successive states of flight and decay, while drawing on the artist’s research into the historic glazed blue tiles known as azulejos that distinguish the architecture of Porto. The presentation marks a pivotal point in Cai’s practice, when he returned to colour after working primarily with black gunpowder for several decades.

Works from the artist’s ambitious, multi-year project ‘An Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History’ are also featured on the booth. Initiated in 2017, this series includes solo exhibitions at significant museums and cultural sites around the world – such as the Prado Museum, Uffizi Galleries, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, National Archaeological Museum of Naples and Pompeii ruins – where the artist has engaged in dialogues with various periods of art history as represented by these institutions’ collections.

Floral gunpowder paintings inspired by silverpoint techniques of Renaissance art, developed for his 2018 solo exhibition ‘Flora Commedia’ at the Uffizi Galleries, are shown alongside preliminary studies for his landmark ‘Odyssey and Homecoming’ project at Beijing’s Palace Museum. In 2020, Cai became the first contemporary artist to stage a solo exhibition at the museum on the occasion of the Forbidden City’s 600th anniversary.