Looking at contemporary and historical practice as an increasingly important contribution to the Australian cultural, political and economic scene

LANGUAGE AND TEXT: ARTISTS

BACK

XU BING

Xu Bing’s Statement ( 3 sets of printed pads of paper)

BACKGROUND (born China, lives and works in New York.)
Having studied and trained as a conventional, traditional artist in Central Art Academy (1976-81) Xu Bing was recognised as a skilled draughtsman and woodcut artist and was a politically reliable communist. He became an instructor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. An early work Rice Field (1987) follows a conventional technique of woodcut printing yet the traditional landscape is transformed into an aerial map of patterns and marks.

PRACTICE
INTENTIONS
After some philosophical study, Xu Bing became disenchanted and rebelled against written culture itself, launching an attack on the symbol of the Chinese history, the Chinese written character hanzil. Chinese characters are always taught as transparent codes of signification, pictograms each depicting a ‘real object’. He became interested in words whose content is beyond a person’s cognition. In this manner, he became engaged with the meaning, or meaninglessness of words.

PRACTICE
TECHNIQUES
To do this, Xu Bing deconstructed the characters, hand carving 2,000 non- characters, calling the result Tianshu Book from the Sky (1987-91). The work is an installation in three parts; consisting of a four-volume edition of the counterfeit characters, wall texts and scrolls both of which imitate the traditional Chinese religious texts. The work reflects the ambivalence in Chinese culture’s attitude to text and performance. Xu Bing’s work allows the audience to catch a glimpse of the power of words, by entering that space between surface and depth, covering and exposure.

ARTWORKS
Xu Bing Tianshu, A Book from the Sky (1987-91) is a work started by destroying carved woodblock characters and reforming them into new volumes. The text is meaningless, frustrating for a reader and continues a tradition of the absurd that has its roots in Western literature. The work was recognised internationally and has appeal for both the Chinese and the Western community because the characters were meaningless. The artwork presented a conundrum, a thing of beauty that was patently absurd. It drew criticism from authorities because it appeared to comment upon the impossibility of communication in a communist regime. It has become Xu Bing’s best known work almost seen as a ‘defining document’ of contemporary Chinese artists.

Xu Bing now lives in USA, traveling to China for inspiration and manufacture of his new pieces. His work is tempered by a feeling for process and individual skills. In Ghost Beating the Wall (or Gui Da Qiang) a paper impression of the Great Wall serves as a metaphor for the inadequacy of the Wall as a protective measure. In 1994, Xu Bing presented a performance piece, which consisted of two pigs; a boar with Latin characters on his skin and a sow with Chinese characters on its back. The animals ran around and then the boar mounted the sow, symbolising the dominance of West over East.(A Case Study of Transference 1994)

Xu Bing's work Square Words: New English Calligraphy (1994-6) is also an installation and interactive performance. It consists of a gallery space being turned into a classroom in which the audience could learn the basics of Chinese calligraphy. Accompanying instructional books demonstrating the essentials of each stroke, copybooks and a video complete the illusion. In fact, the characters of the books are disguised English words.

Artist quotation
I have designed the words, at times I am struck by their visual unfamiliarity and strangeness... I want the audience to collide with conceptual boundaries and reshape habitual modes of considering.

Language as the mediator meaning is further developed in the work, Landscript ( 2001) a portrayal of a mountain by writing the word for mountain, and the word for clouds written as its character. Without the characters to describe the landscape it would be impossible to understand the work. It would be purely abstract.

The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountain consists of embossed in the shape of characters that tells the story of the Chinese parable. Silkworms bred by Xu Bing are placed onto the paper of the artwork and their cocoons gradually weave between the words of the story thus, providing a literal and symbolic clash of nature and culture.

Xu Bing’s Statement consisted of 3 pads of printed pads of paper. The text is Xu Bing’s statement for the exhibition. Each pad contains various words and the audience is invited to remove pieces of paper and therefore change the text (each piece had Xu Bing’s email address on the back) (see above).

References

www.qag.qld.gov.au
This site shows a small image and outline of Xu Bing’s work Book from the Sky ( 1987-91)
purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1994.

www.hanshan.com
This page provides extensive details of Xu Bing’s traditional conventional skills and techniques. It explains the artist’s exploration of the contemporary and its challenge to the political and art worlds.

www.xubing.com
This is the home page for the artist with a range of artworks and images from earliest traditions to more contemporary examples. It also shows a full biography and resume for the artist.

www.asia.si.edu
Review of an exhibition of Xu Bing’s work Monkeys Grasping for the Moon, consisting of 21 carved wood pieces (spelling the word monkey in different languages).

www.universes-in-universe.de

Chui, M. Everyday Sightings, Art Asia Pacific, vol. 3, no.2, 1996.
Chui,M. Use of text in Contemporary Chinese Art (Qiu Zhijie, Xu Bing, Wenda Gu
Art Asia Pacific issue 29, 2001- Art and Language p78
Dixon, C. The People's Progress 20th century Chinese Woodcuts Catalogue, Art Gallery of NSW, 1996.
Davidson, K. Islands: Contemporary Installations from Australia, Asia, Europe and America Catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, T&H., 1996.
Fenner, F. The personal and the political, Art Monthly, No.105, 1997.
Fouser, Robert, The Kwangju Biennale Unmapping the Unmapped (Xu Bing, Navin Rawanchaikul )Art Asia Pacific no.18 1998, p22
Fumio Nanjo, Xu Bing, Art Asia Pacific Issue 37, 2003 (Jan, Feb March), p70
Goodman, J. Chinese Character, World Art Vol. 14, 1997, p14,
Goodman, J. From outside in. Inside out, New Chinese Art ( Xu Bing, Zhang Huan, Zhu Ming) Art Asia Pacific Issue 24 1999, p28.
Goodman,J. Xu Bing Cultural Translator Art Asia Pacific, Issue 35, 2002, p 24
Jaivin, L. From the Barrel of a Gun, Art Asia Pacific, p42, June 1993, Supplement to Art and Australia.
Hanru, H. Beyond the Cynical Art Asia Pacific Vol. 3, No. 1, p42, 1996.
McDonald, J. Islands of lost soul Sydney Morning Herald, Sept 28 1996.
McDonald, J. Close Encounters Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 5 1996.
Souchou, Y. Xu Bing Frighten Heaven and Make the Spirits Cry, Beyond The Future The Third Asia Pacific Triennial Of Contemporary Art Queensland Art Gallery, 1999 p230
Wu Hung, Mapping Contemporanity Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2002
Queensland Art Gallery Catalogue, p18.
Review of Exhibition Word Play Contemporary Art by Xu Bing, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Washington DC, 21 October 2001- 12 May 2002.