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 an article written by a critic interpreting the abstract paintings of the renowned artist Jonathan Lasker. Xu's intention was to demonstrate that the critic's interpretation of Lasker's works could just as well be applied to the salvaged works. As a next step, Xu replaced real names and art works with false names and illustrations of the discovered paintings. Xu then engaged a professional translator to translate the modified text into Chinese, making it even more incomprehensible. Subsequently, he published the falsified, translated article in a prestigious Chinese art magazine 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 arbitrary nature of critical language, and the basis for assessing the value of art. 

1993

Medium: Mixed media installation / Braille books and book covers

This work, which combines the words “braille” and “illiterate” in its title, features a reading room equipped with a table stacked with books. The covers of these books have been altered by the artist to feature English titles superimposed over the original braille titles. However, in actuality, the English titles are completely different from the braille titles, and bear no relation to the actual content of the books. Upon opening the books, a sighted viewer might expect to find an English text inside, but instead discovers pages printed in braille. The content of the braille pages would be assumed to correspond to the English title on the cover. Conversely, a blind viewer who is literate in braille, unaware of the misleading English title, would not know that sighted readers had a completely wrong impression of the book's content. As such, Brailliterate acts as an experiment to explore how the same object can be interpreted by different viewers in completely different ways. Only those who possess both full visual capacity and knowledge in braille would be able to fully grasp the deception at play. This provcative work raises important questions about cultural bias, misinterpretation, and the potential for concealment within our understanding and communication. 

1992－1993

Medium: Installation of printed and bound books with religious and secular texts

Dimension: varies; 35 × 45 × 8 cm each book (closed)

This installation consists of 300 specially printed and bound volumes titled Post Testament. Within these books is an unusual hybrid text, combining the King James’ version of the New Testament with a trashy, contemporary novel by alternating each word of the two texts. This unique arrangement requires the reader to skip every word in order to read either complete text. Regardless of which narrative the reader follows, the visual presence of the other narrative cannot be avoided, leaving a lasting imprint in the reader’s mind. The hybrid text thus presents a new and unconventional reading pattern. With Post Testament, Xu Bing attempts to experiment with the relation between avant-garde literature and visual art.