Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On features three works of varying violence and beauty. It’s a representative overview of Cai’s career. The titular piece is the star of the show—“Head On” consists of 99 life-sized wolves caught in a loop of destruction. The circle starts with the wolf replicas prowling, they then take off and soar through the sky in an arc, before crashing down, bloodlessly, against a glass wall.

This alluring doom is further explored in “Illusion II,” a video installation of a house exploding: In front of a bombed-out Berlin train station, Cai reconstructs a German cottage, packs it with fireworks, and sets it off with electricity. Cai’s explosive exhibition is rounded up by “Vortex"—German gunpowder (“Cleaner but ignites faster han the Chinese variety," according to Cai) is laid on Japanese paper and, when combusted, leaves stencilled shapes of wolves—akin to rediscovered caveman drawings.

For an artist who creates such violent works, Cai is surprisingly soft-spoken. Speaking through an interpreter, he explains that the exhibition was inspired by the Cold War. “I was born in 1957 when China was resisting both the US and the USSR, so during my formative years it was my subconscious representing China. When the Berlin Wall fell, I was based in Japan and was more focused on my projects on extraterrestrials, but I have an enduring interest in national boundaries.” And what does he hope to evoke for his Singaporean viewers? “I want them to see a bit of themselves in the works.” It’s apparently a circular process, too: “First, for them to question the artist’s intention, second, to wonder how the work is made, and third, why the artist made it.”

Don’t miss Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On through Aug 31 at the National Museum of Singapore, 93 Stamford Rd., 6332-3659. Free.