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Back Home

Dragonfly Eyes

PHOTO|VIDEO

2017

Video, surveillance camera footage taken from public live-streaming websites

81'


trailer


I’ve wanted to make a film from surveillance footage since 2013, but I had no access to the necessary resources. Since 2015, surveillance cameras in China have been linked to the cloud database: countless surveillance recordings have been streamed online. So I took up the project again. I collected a huge amount of footage and tried to use these fragments of reality to tell a story.


With no human agency operating them, surveillance cameras produce fascinating footage round the clock. Ineffably silent, these cameras record incessantly. Sometimes they record images that are beyond logical understanding, captured in one mad, fleeting instant. When these seemingly random yet intricately connected clips are assembled, what's the distance between the video fragments of real life and 'reality'?


—Xu Bing

FILM

Book from the Sky

Installation view at Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, USA, 2016

Installation view at Crossings/Traversées, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1998

Installation view at Elvehjem Museum of Art, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

Installation view at Elvehjem Museum of Art, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

Elvehjem Museum of Art, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

sketch

PHOTO|VIDEO

1987-1991

Medium: Mixed media installation/ hand-printed books and scrolls printed from blocks inscribed with ''false'' characters


This four-volume treatise, produced over four years, was made with thousands of meaningless characters that look like Chinese, each designed by the artist in a Song-style font that was standardized by artisans in the Ming dynasty. For the immersive installation, the artist hard-carved over four thousand moveable type printing blocks. The meticulous, exhaustive production process and the work’s format, arrayed like ancient Chinese classics, were such that audiences could not believe that these exquisite texts were completely illegible. The work simultaneously invites and denies the viewer’s desire to read the work.


As Xu Bing has noted, the false characters “seem to upset intellectuals,” inspiring doubt in received systems of knowledge. Many early viewers pored over the artwork, obsessively looking for real characters. 

CHARACTER ARTIST BOOKS INSTALLATION

Book From the Ground

Book From the Ground Design

Book From the Ground Design

Book From the Ground Design

Book From the Ground: From Point to Point

Book From the Ground Software

Installation view at Xu Bing: Book from the Sky to Book from the Ground, Eslite Gallery, Taipei, 2012

PHOTO|VIDEO

2003—ongoing


Xu Bing has been undertaking his Book from the Ground project since 2003. The artist first compiled symbols drawn from the public sphere and wrote a book using only these signs. The book is written such that any reader, regardless of cultural background or level of education, can read it. As long as one exists within contemporary society, one can interpret this book. Because of the universality of its visual signification, it can be published anywhere without translation. For the Book fom the Ground installation, Xu Bing recreated his studio's working environment and brought some materials to the exhibition space, implying that this is a never-ending project in progress. Xu Bing’s studio also made a character database application corresponding to the language of this book. Users can input English or Chinese, and the program will translate their words into his lexicon of signs. It thus becomes an intermediary form of communication and exchange between the two languages. As the personal computer and the internet have become increasingly integrated into daily life, and the lexicon of digital icons grows by the day, the symbolic language of Book from the Ground has been further updated, augmented, and complicated. Responding to his own Book from the Sky, a work from 30 years earlier in which writing is illegible to everyone, Book from the Ground is legible to all. It is an expression of Xu Bing’s longstanding ideal of a universal language.


Book From the Ground: From Point to Point can be purchased in various bookstores and websites. 

CHARACTER INSTALLATION NEW MEDIA

Series

  •  Book  from  the  Ground  -  Pop-up  Book

    2015-16
  • Book  from  the  Ground  -  Shop

    2012
  • Book  from  the  Ground  -  Studio  Installation

    2003  -  ongoing
  • Book  From  the  Ground  Software

    2006

Phoenix

PHOTO|VIDEO

INSTALLATION

Series

  • Phoenix  2015

    2015
  • Phoenix:  Xu  Bing  at  the  Cathedral

    2008  -  2010  /  2014
  • Xu  Bing  Phoenix  (MA)

    2008  -  2010  /  2012
  • Phoenix  Project

    2008  -  2010  

Background Story

PHOTO|VIDEO

Indistint forms of plants and stones can be discerned through frosted glass. Eventually an image of a landscape emerges, reminiscent of East Asian painting. There is a passageway between the showcases, allowing a view behind the scenes. Here the visitor sees dry twigs and branches of pine trees, and also decorations mode of simple materials- modeling clay and cotton wool, all held together by sticky tape and fishing line... Finally the visitor is able to see something that would normally be kept hidden at an exhibtion. Behind the walls of the exhibition space there is a maintenance space, with heating pipes and empty shelving. A view from the outside only shows the surface. It is only when we try to find out what is beneath the surface that we can discover the background, and everything becomes intertwined in the image.

INSTALLATION

Series

  • Backstory:  Landscape  Painted  on  the  Double  Ninth  Festival

    2012
  • Backstory:  Blue  and  Green  Landscape

    2013
  • Backstory:  Landscape  after  Wu  Zhen

    2013
  • Backstory:  Water  Village

    2012
  • Backstory:  Shangfang  Temple  Scroll

    2016
  • Backstory  Story  10

    2015
  • Background  Story  9

    2014
  • Background  Story  8

    2012
  • Background  Story  7

    2011
  • Background  Story  6

    2010
  • Background  Story  5

    2010
  • Background  Story  4

    2008
  • Background  Story  3

    2006
  • Background  Story  2

    2006
  • Background  story  1

    2004

Square Word Calligraphy

Inside An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy textbook

Inside An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy textbook

Inside An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy

Practicing Square Word Calligraphy with its textbook and tracing book

26 letters in English alphabet written in Square Word Calligraphy

"Art for the People"

"Square Word"

PHOTO|VIDEO

For Square Word Calligraphy, Xu Bing designs a calligraphic system by which English words come to resemble Chinese characters. Like a linguistic breeder, the artist combines Chinese calligraphic arts with English writing to create a new “species.” Yet it’s different from the nonsense characters in Book from the Sky, which bring the viewer feelings of hesitation, suspicion, and confusion. When reading Square Word Calligraphy, those feelings are suddenly resolved with the revelation that the work contains “real” text. The West thereby gains a new, Eastern form of calligraphic culture. Established notions of Chinese and English no longer obtain, and one’s thinking is reset, opening new potentials that limn the foundations of cognition itself.

 

After developing this lettering system, Xu Bing created a new installation piece, modeled on adult literacy classes, to serve as an exhibition space, adding a textbook, instructional video, and calligraphy tracing book for use in the classroom. As the audience enters the gallery, they also enter a site of study. 


CHARACTER

Series

  • An  introduction  to  Square  Word  Calligraphy

    1994-1996
  • The  Horse  Keeps  Running  

    2008
  • Your  Surname  Please  

    1998

Square Word Calligraphy Classroom

PHOTO|VIDEO

1994-1996

Materials: Mixed media instaltion; instructional vidio, model books, copybooks, ink, brushes, brush stands, blackboard


The intention of this installation is to simulate a classroom-like settingm modeled on adult literacy classes, in a gallery or museum space. Desks are arranged with small containers of ink, brushes and a copybook with instructions on the basic principles of ''New English Calligraphy,'' a writing system invented and designed by the artist. A video titled ''Elementary Square Word Calligraphy Instruction,'' is played on a monitor in the exhibition space, capturing the audience's attention and inviting them to participate in the class. Once they are seated at the desks, the audience is instructed to take up their brushes and the lesson in New English Calligraphy begins. 


Essentially, New English Calligraphy is a fusion of written English and written Chinese. The letters of an English word are slightly altered and arranged in a square word format so that the word takes on the ostensible form of a Chinese character, yet remains legible to the English reader. As people attempt to recognize and write these words, some of the thinking patterns that have been ingrained in them since they learned to read are challenged. It is the artists' belief that people must have their routine thinking attacked in this way. While undergoing this process of estrangement and re-familiarization with one's written language, the audience is reminded that the sensation of distance between other systems of language and one's own is largely self-induced.

CHARACTER ARTIST BOOKS INSTALLATION

Travelling to the Wonderland

PHOTO|VIDEO

2013

Materials: Mixed media: Stones, Clay, Mist, Light effect, Sounds of bird and insects, LCD screen 

Dimension: Varies

Location: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK


INSTALLATION

The Character of Characters

Instalation view at Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA, 2012

Instalation view of The Character of Characters at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA, USA), 2012

Draft for The Character of Characters, MASS MoCA, 2012

Draft for The Character of Characters, MASS MoCA, 2012

Instalation view at Things Are Not What They First Appear, SCAD Museum of Art Savannah (Savannah, GA, USA)

PHOTO|VIDEO

2012: 17'

2012, 2015: 15'

Materials: seventeen-minute animated film 


This animation is conceived as a study and imagination of a calligraphy masterpiece by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) in the collection of Yahoo’s founder, Mr. Zhiyuan Yang. Through the medium of widescreen animation, The Character of Characters describes the source of the unique character of Chinese people. Everyone in China who has received basic education must, over the course of years, commit to memorize and then write and re-write thousands of characters, each character a drawing. This is the way things have been done over thousands of years in the Chinese history, so this must have had some influence on the formation of the character of Chinese people. It implies the way that Chinese people see and approach things, and why China is the way it is today – developing at this breakneck speed but not in line with the Western value system.

 

Chinese people’s worldviews and concepts of freedom; the consequences of Chinese people’s flexibility, collectivism, face-saving mentality, moral stance that demands focus on communal interests, and worship of symbols and big names; the ability of Chinese culture to digest other cultures, and the Chinese culture of copying (“shanzhai”). All of these special characteristics could be said to have a deep connection to the Chinese way of writing characters. This animation seeks to reveal the relation between Chinese writing and cultural characteristics, the core and energy of Chinese culture, and its advantages and disadvantages for people to continue to build new modes of human civilization.

 

 Supported by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation.



CHARACTER NEW MEDIA

Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Title of the scroll, "Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll"

Work in progess

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Details of Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

woodblock

woodblock

woodblock

Xu Bing working on Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll, Beijing, 2010

Work in progress

Mustard Seed Garden Manual

PHOTO|VIDEO

2010


Materials: Woodblock print mounted as a handscroll, ink on paper


I created this work upon an invitation from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. By cutting, reorganizing, and printing motifs from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (1679), I created a handscroll version of the classic manual. I believe that a chore characteristic of Chinese painting is its schematized  nature, which is reflected on classic literature, theatrical expression, and various methods of social production. The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting is a dictionary of signs for representing the myriad things of the world. Through The Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll, I attempts to investigate and reveal the relation between Chinese way of thinking and the semiotic and schematized nature of Chinese culture.


PRINTMAKING CHARACTER

Forest Project

PHOTO|VIDEO

The Forest Project is an experiment of creating a self-sustaining system that will move funds from wealthy areas to impoverished areas for planting trees. Its feasibility is based on the following principles: firstly, utilize free online services such as auction and sales hosting, money transfers, and even online teaching to achieve the lowest possible costs; secondly, benefit everyone involved in the project; thirdly, utilize regional economic discrepancies ($2.50 is a subway ride in New York, but it can plant ten trees in Kenya). 


SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Series

  • Forest  Project:  Taiwan

    2014
  • Forest  Project:  Sao  Paulo,  Brazil  

    2012
  • Forest  Project

    2008

Tobacco Project

PHOTO|VIDEO

“Tobacco Project” is an extended project that collects and organizes materials related to tobacco that cannot be easily defined as art or sociology. The project began in 1999 in Durham, home of the Duke family; passed through Shanghai in 2004; and in 2011 extended once more to Virginia — locations closely intertwined with tobacco.

 

Tobacco is an object that permeates—it pervades all spaces, ends in ashes, and has many different connections with individuals and the world more broadly—in economics, culture, law, morality, faith, fashion, living space, personal interest, and more. Xu Bing is interested in reflecting on the problems and weaknesses of humanity by exploring the long and entangled relationship between humans and tobacco.


INSTALLATION

Series

  • Tobacco  Project:  Ridgefield

    2012
  • Tobacco  Project:  Richmond

    2011
    ​
  • Tobacco  Project:  Shanghai

    2004
  • Tobacco  Project:  Durham

    2000

Living Word

PHOTO|VIDEO

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.


CHARACTER INSTALLATION

Series

  • Living  Word  3  

    2011
  • Living  Word  2

    2002
  • Living  Word

    2001

Magic Carpet

Magic Carpet

Magic Carpet

"Belief", Magic Carpet, 2006

Preparatory diagram for Magic Carpet

Preparatory diagram for Magic Carpet

Preparatory diagram for Magic Carpet

PHOTO|VIDEO

2006

Medium: Handweaved carpet

Dimension: 595 x 595 cm each


For the first Singapore Biennale, Xu Bing created a prayer carpet for the Kwan-Im Temple, the largest Buddhist Temple in Singapore. 

The design of the carpet is similar in concept to Hui Su's Former Qin Dynasty creation the Xuan Ji Tu. In 1620 Hui Su created a grid of 841 characters that can be read in any number of directions and combinations. From this single grid, one can discern nearly 4,000 separate poems. In this fashion, Xu Bing selected passages from four significant faith-based texts (one Buddhist, one Gnostic, one Jewish, and one passage from Marx, all in English translation), which he then transcribed as Square Word Calligraphy, and then synthesized into one text. 


CHARACTER INSTALLATION

Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?

PHOTO|VIDEO

2004

Material: Dust


In this installation Xu Bing uses dust that he collected from the streets of lower-Manhattan in the aftermath of September 11th. In the work, Xu Bing references the fine whitish-grey film that covered downtown New York in the weeks following 9-11, and recreates a field of dust across the gallery floor that is punctuated by the outline of a Zen Buddhist poem, revealed as if the letters have been removed from under the layer: 


As there is nothing from the first,

Where does the dust itself collect?


In the work Xu Bing discusses the relationship between the material world and the spiritual world, exploring the complicated circumstances created by different world perspectives. The dust was applied to the floor with a leaf blower and allowed 24 hours to settle. 


The work won the inaugural Artes Mundi Prize, the Wales International Visual Art Prize in 2004 and was later shown at various venues across the world. 



INSTALLATION

Landscript

PHOTO|VIDEO

Landscript, as the title suggests, is “pictures” that Xu Bing intentionally made with “script”.  This project started when the artist went to the Himalayas in Nepal in 1999 and sketched “scenes” with Chinese characters. China has long had a tradition that “calligraphy and painting have the same origins.” Xu Bing’s Landscript, landscape-in-script, transformed the visual images of landscapes to linguistic forms, inviting the viewer to reassess the particularity of Chinese culture hidden in landscape paintings and providing a unique way to “read a scene.”



CHARACTER INSTALLATION

Series

  • The  Suzhou  Landscripts

    2003-2013
  • Landscript:  Sydney  

    2003
  • Reading  Landscape

    2001
  • Landscripts  from  the  Himalayan  Journal  

    1999

Art for the People

Art for the People at the entrance of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 1999

Art for the People at Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2001

Art for the People , 1999

PHOTO|VIDEO

1999

Materials: Mixed media installation; 

Dimension: 36 x 9 ft (1097.3 x 273.4 cm)

Location: Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1999; Victoria and Albert Musum, London, 2001


Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this work was created for the Museum's ''Project Series,'' a group of monumental banners designed by international artists to be displayed outside the entrance to the museum. Xu emblazoned his eye-catching red-and-yellow banner, measuring 36ft x 9ft, with the slogan ''ART FOR THE PEOPLE: Chairman Mao said'' inscribed in his own invented system of ''New English Calligraphy'' -- English words deconstructed but then re-configured into forms that mimic the square structure of Chinese characters. With its prominent display above the museum entrance, the banner and its slogan served both as a motto for the museum and as a public airing of one of Mao Zedong's most fundamental views on art. Reflective also of the artist's personal conviction that Mao's concept of art for the people is universally relevant; the work exemplifies the way in which Xu integrates his particular cultural background and life experience into the international context of contemporary art. 

CHARACTER INSTALLATION

Monkeys Grasp for the Moon

PHOTO|VIDEO

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. 

A chain of monkeys formed out of word shapes. Each link in the chain is a word for “monkey” in a different language (21 languages in total), including Hindi, Japanese, French, Spanish, Hebrew and English. 

CHARACTER INSTALLATION

Series

  • Monkeys  Grasp  for  the  Moon

    2008
  • Monkeys  Grasp  for  the  Moon  

    2001

American Silkworm Series

PHOTO|VIDEO

ANIMALS

Series

  • American  Silkworm  Series  4:  Silkworm  VCR

    1998
  • American  Silkworm  Series  3:  The  Opening

    1998
  • American  Silkworm  Series  2

    1995
  • American  Silkworm  Series  1:  Silkworm  Books

    1994

Cultural Animal

PHOTO|VIDEO

1994

Location: Beijing, China

Materials: Performance media installation with live animal / Live Pig, books, mannequin, wood blocks, ink.


This work was created as an extension of an earlier project: A Case Study of Transference. A life-sized mannequin in human form, covered in false-character tattoos, was placed inside an enclosure containing a male pig, similarly tattooed. The intention was both to observe the reaction of the pig towards the mannequin and to produce an absurd and random drama -- an intention that was realized when the pig reacted to the mannequin in an aggressively sexual manner. The entire process was documented and the resulting photographs were exhibited several years after the event, in 1998. 


ANIMALS

A Case Study of Transference

PHOTO|VIDEO

1993-1994

Location:Beijing, China

Medium: Performance, mixed media installation / Ink and live pigs


When this work was initially performed in Beijing, it revealed an unexpected and surprising dynamic between the spectators and the spectacle. Just before the event took place there was some concern that, once confronted with the unfamiliar cultural environment of the exhibition hall, the pigs would become too nervous to perform the crucial act. But in fact the result was just the opposite: the pigs themselves were completely unfazed, and blithely ignoring their human onlookers pursued their lovemaking with great gusto. It was rather the audience members who found themselves in an embarrassing and awkward position. What ultimately was exposed was not any sense of discomfort or displacement on the part of the pigs, but the limitations and the inability to adapt of the human audience. Xu Bing states: ''These two creatures, devoid of human consciousness, yet carrying on their bodies the marks of human civilization, engage in the most primal form of 'social intercourse.' The absolute directness of this undertaking produces a result that is both unthinkable and worth thinking about. In watching the behavior of the two pigs, we are led to reflect on human behavior.'' To the artist, the process of caring for and working with the pigs constitutes ''a kind of ongoing sociological experiment, touching on myriad issues.'' 

ANIMALS

Wu Street

PHOTO|VIDEO

1993

Medium: media// found oil paintings, falsified magazine article.


The title of this work refers to the Chinese name of a Manhattan street located on the Lower East Side. On this street, the artist salvaged a group of non-representational oil paintings from the garbage, providing the catalyst for this conceptual piece.


''Wu'' in Chinese has various meanings, including both ''misunderstanding'' and ''enlightenment'' in the Chan (Zen) sense. This dichotomy between understanding and misunderstanding is integral to ''Wu Street.'' Xu paired the salvaged paintings with a ''profoundly deep'' article by a critic interpreting the abstract paintings of the renowned artist Jonathan Lasker. Xu's intention was to demonstrate his feeling that the critic's opaque interpretation of Lasker's works could just as well be applied to the salvaged works. As a next step, Xu altered the critical text by substituting the real names and art works with false names and illustrations of the found paintings. He then hired a professional translator to translate the altered text into Chinese, making it even more incomprehensible, and subsequently published the falsified, translated article in a prestigious art magazine in China under the pseudonym of Jason Jones. On the surface, Wu Street appears to be no more than an elaborate practical joke; yet it poses serious questions concerning the contemporary art system, the often arbitrary nature of critical language and the basis for assessing the value of art. 

Ghost Pounding the Wall

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

Work in progress, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

Work in progress, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

Work in progress, Beijing, 1990

Work in progress, Beijing, 1990

Work in progress, Beijing, 1990

PHOTO|VIDEO

1990-1991

Medium: Mixed media installation/ ink rubbings on paper with stones and soil

Dimension: Central part approx. 31(L) x 6(W) m; Side part approx. 13(H) x 14(W) m each



In 1990, Xu Bing decided to realize a longstanding vision: to “make rubbings of some massive natural object.” At the time, he had an idea: any textured object could be transferred onto a two-dimensional surface as a print. After much preparation, in May Xu Bing and some friends, students, and local residents set off for the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, where they spent a little less than a month making rubbings of three sides of a beacon tower and a portion of the wall itself. This was the last major artwork that the artist started before moving to the United States in 1990, where it was exhibited for the first time. That the work was born “in-transit” gives it an extra layer of meaning: “Those American printers were shocked by the piece’s size,” Xu noted.

 

The title Ghost Pounding the Wall is translated from Gui Da Qiang (“a wall built by ghosts”), a Chinese aphorism meaning to be stuck in one’s own thinking, refering to a story of a man trapped behind labyrinthine walls built by ghosts. The epithet was hurled at Xu Bing by viewers who found Book of the Sky incomprehensible. Xu Bing had no quarrel with this criticism, and used it as the title of this work—a play on words, as the word for “build” can also mean “pound.” The monumental scroll challenges received notions of nation, history, and identity, posing a daunting question: What do we protect in our history books? The work transforms the Great Wall into a paper edition of itself by shedding its history and context, hinting at ironies of isolationism, migration, and various cultural legacies.


PRINTMAKING INSTALLATION SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Five Series of Repetition

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Five Series of Repetition-Zhiliudi (detail)

Installation view at "Three Installation by Xu Bing", Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

Installation view at Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA, 1991

PHOTO|VIDEO

1986-1987

Medium: woodblock print


1987 marks the year Xu Bing’s artistic practice took a decisive turn towards conceptualism. When Xu Bing began his graduate studies, he became interested in printmaking as an indirect form of drawing, as well as the element of repetition that characterizes the medium. For his graduation exhibition, he showed Five Series of Repetitions as well as his “Stone Series” of copperplate prints. Later in the same year, he organized his personal views on printmaking and creative insights into an essay entitled “A New Exploration and Reconsideration of Pictorial Multiplicity.” In it, he wrote, “Multiple, prescribed impressions are the crucial element that differentiates printmaking from other fine arts, and it is only by following this line of inquiry that one can seek out printmaking’s essence.” This set of works represents an experiment in the artistic qualities that make prints unique. He begins by printing an uncut block of wood, making a sequence of prints as he carves until the image is entirely effaced. The entire mark-making process is then transferred onto a ten-meter-long stretch of bark paper. The image thus transitions from a formless solid block of black, and through a complicated process arrives at formless solid block of white, a gesture with a strong Zen Buddhist implication. This progression, from nothing to something to nothing again, anticipates the artist’s desire, stated later in his career, to “make something useless”—to push the medium of woodcutting, and the “usefulness” of figurative arts, into new territory. Five Series also anticipates his later explorations of visual culture and materiality.


PRINTMAKING

Bustling Village on the Water

Bustling Village on the Water, 1980

PHOTO|VIDEO

1980

Medium: woodblock print


PRINTMAKING

Shattered Jade

PHOTO|VIDEO

1977-1983

Medium: woodblock print


In 1977, Xu Bing passed his entrance exams to enroll in the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. There, he began a series of woodblock prints based on the theme Shattered Jade. There are around 150 pocket-sized works in this set of woodblock prints. They are characteristic of a certain style in Xu Bing’s early works, and they can be seen as a starting point in his artistic inspiration. They express a certain nostalgia for his time in the countryside when he was working in the arts community there, for the pure and simple village life. The plainness, simplicity, and naivete of these works, made just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, are a stark contrast to the false, grandiose, empty forms of that era. 


PRINTMAKING