First exhibited: Book from the Ground: From Point to Point, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China, 2012

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 reflects on how ways of learning and using the Chinese characters might have influenced the character of Chinese people. Everyone in China who has received basic education must, over the course of years, commit to memorizing and then writing and re-writing thousands of characters. This is the way things have been done over thousands of years. We can imagine how this way of learning the Chinese characters might have influenced how Chinese people see and approach things, their worldviews and concepts of freedom, the Chinese culture of copying (shanzhai), and even the way China is today as a nation. 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.

2012

Materials: Natural debris attached to frosted glass panel, 60 x 430 cm

Location: Palace Museum, Beijing, China

2012

Materials: Natural debris attached to frosted glass panel, 767 x 256cm

Location: MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, USA

2015

Location: SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, USA

"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."

- Xu Bing

2012

Materials: Natural debris attached to frosted glass panel

Location: Mass Moca, North Adams, MA, USA

"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."

- Xu Bing

Location: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA

Medium: Mixed media installation/ tobacco leaves, live tobacco plants, various tobacco related materials

2012

Medium: Mixed media installation / Student drawings, painting, primer, computer (auction website)

Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil (30th Sao Paulo Biennial)

Through art, the internet, culture, education and the involvement of local folks, Forest Project creates a system to facilitate the automatic and uninterrupted flow of funds from developed countries to Kenya, earmarked for the planting of new trees.

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