2001

Materials: Cut and painted acrylic

Location: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA

The work is mainly comprised of over 400 calligraphic variants of the Chinese character “niao”, meaning bird, carved in colored acrylic and laid out in a shimmering track that rises from the floor into the air. On the gallery floor Chinese characters in the “simplified style” script popularized during the Mao era are used to write out the dictionary definition for niao. The bird/niao characters then break away from the confines of the literal definition and take flight through the installation space. As they rise into the air, the characters “de-evolve” from the simplified system to standardized Chinese text and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph hasde upon a bird’s actual appearance. At the uppermost point of the installation, a flock of these ancient characters, in form of both bird and word, soar high into the rafters toward the upper windows of the space, as though attempting to break free of the words with which humans attempt to categorize and define them.

The colorful, shimmering imagery of the installation imparts a magical, fairy-tale like quality. Yet the overt simplicity, charm and ready comprehensibility of the work has the underlying effect of guiding the audience to open up the “cognitive space” of their minds to the implications of, and relationships between, word, concept, symbol and image.

2001

Medium: Mixed media installation/ computer monitors

Location: Asia Society, New York, USA

Commissioned as a permanent installation by the Asia Society, New York, this work consists of a series of four flat computer monitors of diminishing size mounted sequentially on a wall at Asia Society headquarters. Words rendered in Xu's invented ''English Square Word Calligraphy'' appear first on the largest monitor. The characters then begin to break apart and move across the first screen, disappearing and then reappearing on the second and third screens in a continuous motion. Arriving at the last screen, the characters reassemble into ordinary English script, revealing a text-book conversation beginning with the phrase ''Excuse me sir, can you tell me how to get to the Asia Society?''

Evoking the phraseology of an elementary English-as-a-second language textbook, Xu's text points to the commonality of experience of new immigrants to the United States. Since the viewers standing in front of Xu's installation are in fact already at the Asia Society, this request for directions implies the deeper existential question of ''Where are we, in reality?'' Experienced within the specific environs of the so-called ''Asia Society New York,'' Xu's work plays with the concept ''I am within you, you are within me'' - the same concept explored in his ''English Square Word Calligraphy.'

2001

Medium: mixed media installation/ silkworm

Location: Eslite Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan

2001

Medium: Mixed media installation

Location: North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

For this exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, Xu Bing created a room-filling, three-dimensional landscape in the exhibition gallery. Meditating on the view of the landscape outside the windows of the gallery space, Xu Bing took advantage of the pictographic quality of early Chinese script to 'spell out' the natural scenery, covering floor, ceilings and windows in over one thousand acrylic characters representing landscape elements such as water, grass, trees, birds, etc. Audience members could wander freely through this verbal/visual landscape. 

Exhibition curator Huston Paschal described this work as a ''character garden...provid[ing] a witty interaction between East and West, nature and art, word and image.'' At the same time, it demonstrates the artist's increased interest in creating works that are empathetic to the audience and invite its participation. 

2001, 2008

Materials：Lacquer on baltic birch wood (2001)

                  Lacquer on fiber (2008)

Location：Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C, USA (2001)

                 U.S. Embassy, Beijing, China (2008)

The idea for this installation came from a Chinese saying "monkeys grasp the moon" which alludes to an old folk tale about a group of monkeys who tried to capture the moon. Viewing the reflection of the moon on a pool of water from their place on the branch of a tree, the monkeys decided to link their arms and tails together to touch what they thought was the real moon. When at last they touched the moon, it vanished in the ripples of the water. This fanciful yet instructive tale reminds us that what we strive to achieve may in fact be an illusion. 

Xu Bing's Monkeys Grasp the Moon is a chain of monkeys formed out of word shapes. Each link in the chain is the word for "monkey" in a different international language, including Hindi, Japanese, French, Spanish, Hebrew and English. These words are stylized to resemble monkeys. Monkeys Grasp the Moon extends through center of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery's main staircase. The monkeys hang down 90 ft. from the skylight at the top of this atrium to a reflecting pool on the lowest floor of the gallery.