Medium: Limited Edition Print

Dimension: 15” X 15”

Date: 2020

Commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Xu Bing creates this original artwork to celebrate The Met’s 150th Anniversary. Art for the People for The Met is a six-color lithograph and relief print, which includes two components: Square Word Calligraphy and multiple red “seals” based on ancient Chinese literati tradition. With a closer look, the seals actually turn out to be QR codes that the audience can scan and read further on The Met’s website. The Met has acquired the first edition of the print portfolio.

Materials: Natural debris attached to frosted glass panel

2020

Exhibition Location：The 1st Ji'nan Biennial, Shandong Province, China

In 2004, I was installing an exhibition at the East Asian Art Museum in Germany. During the Second World War, 90 percent of the collection was moved to the former Soviet Union by the Soviet Red Army. Only some photos of the lost artwork are left. I hope to use the large glass showcases surrounding the existing space to create a new work that combines local history and my cultural background. I saw the potted plants behind the frosted glass wall in the office area of the airport during a connecting flight, which looked like a smudged Chinese painting. At this time, I thought of the large glass cabinets of the museum and the missing art pieces and got the inspiration for Background Story.

The artwork for the 2018 vintage label reflects on the illusory splendour of Xu Bing’s series of imaginary Chinese characters. The calligraphy resembles the structure of Chinese characters but is actually composed of the Latin alphabet. With an acute sense of the bonds that unite different cultures, Xu Bing expresses his linguistic creativity in the 2018 label by rewriting the Latin alphabet to create a unique script in which the alphabet is absorbed into the codes of traditional Chinese ideography.

The 2018 label features a coalescence of cultures through the Chinese characters that denote “Mouton Rothschild.” The letters in the artwork are designed by Xu Bing to reveal themselves to the attentive reader one after the other, in the same way that the aromas and flavours of a very fine wine, with patience, are also gradually discovered.