Xu Bing 徐冰

From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki

Xu Bing is a printmaker and multi-media artist. Born in 1955 in Chongqing, China, Xu has enjoyed a highly successful and prolific career based in his Brooklyn studio. In 2008, Xu returned to his the Central Academy of Fine Arts, his alma mater, to serve as its new vice president.

                                                                                    

Contents 1 Date and Place of Birth 2 Childhood & Family 3 Education & Development 4 Art 4.1 Early Works 4.2 Art and Language 4.3 New English Calligraphy 4.4 Site Specific Projects 5 Emergence & Reception 6 Awards & Honors 7 Exhibitions 8 Acquisitiuons & Auctions 9 References

[edit] Date and Place of Birth

Xu Bing was born in Chongqing in 1955, but moved at an early age to Beijing, where he spent the remainder of his childhood and early adult life.

[edit] Childhood & Family

Xu Bing's family moved from Chongqing to Beijing when Xu's father obtained a teaching position in Beijing University, where his mother worked as a librarian. At an early age, Xu frequented the libraries and was fascinated by the enormous amount of characters he did not yet recognize. ^[1]

[edit] Education & Development

Xu Bing began his studies as a printmaking student at the Central Academy of Fine Art in 1977, where he was instructed by important prints artists such as Gu Yuan and Li Hua. Contrary to the Propagandistic styles with which he used to work, Xu made a series of prints (roughly 150 pieces) that reminisced truthfully and realistically about his days working in the countryside. This collection entitled The Scattered Jades (Sui Yu Ji) was widely exhibited around the world and won him several awards. After finishing his undergraduate studies, Xu continued to teach in the academy, and completed an MFA in 1987.

Beginning in the 80s, with the Economic Reform and Open-Door Policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping, China saw an unprecedented popularity of canonical works of Western art and culture, following decades of seclusion from the world. A wide range of philosophers were introduced through translations and book reviews from Chinese scholars, attracting serious interests from avant-garde artists enthusiastically seeking artistic and ideological inspirations. The 1985 retrospective of Robert Rauschenberg in Beijing further stirred up the art scene in China. Fellow avant-garde artists such as Gu Wenda and Wu Shanzhuan who explored language and Chinese characters through art also inspired Xu Bing.

Around 1987, Xu Bing began working on the installation Book From the Sky, where he fabricated and cast pseudo Chinese characters--bogus combinations of legitimate radicals--then printed them on long scrolls. When Xu exhibited the first part of the work at his own show at the National Art Museum of China in 1988, it became a heatedly debated topic--for its metaphorical criticism of authority and traditional culture, as well as its sheer formal presentation and aggressive gesture.                                                                 

He continued working on the piece and exhibited it again at the 1989 China Avant-Garde exhibition as its largest piece of work. The installation drew attention from both in and outside China, and while finishing another ambitious piece Ghost Pounding the Wall, Xu was invited to lecture at the University of Wisconsin Madison as an honorary fellow in 1990. A year later, he undertook an MFA at the Univesity of South Dakota to learn modern print-making technique, paper fabrication and binding techinques.^[2]

In March 1993, Xu Bing moved to New York City and lived in Ai Weiwei's famous East Village habitat, enjoying its stimulating life style in the circle of Chinese artists, directors, composers, as well as encounters with the Beat generation poet Allen Ginsberg and writer Quentin Crisp. ^[3]

Xu Bing later settled in his Brooklyn studio. Though he has traveled between the United States and China throughout his career in New York City, he has decided to return to the Mainland to serve as the vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Many regarded this unusual appointment to be a seminal event in China's art world of 2008.^[4]

[edit] Art

[edit] Early Works

As a print-making student, Xu Bing began working on a series of small scale, black and white woodblock prints. The collection features 150 works that depicted ordinary objects and quotidian rural life during Xu Bing's labor camp experiences in the countryside. Entitled the Scattered 'Jades, these prints are quite charatereistic of Xu Bing's early print-making style, which was drastically different from the dominant Socialist Realism aesthetics of the Cultural Revolution. The prints were widely exhibited in Europe, Asia, and North America, and are collected by the British Library. After graduating with a BA in 1981, Xu Bing continued to teach sketching at the Central Academy of Fine Art.

[edit]

Art and Language

Xu is considered a member of the group loosely termed the "Art and Language" camp by art historian Norman Bryson--a few distictive Chinese avant-garde artists tackling artistic issues through languages--both in content and formal representation. In the company of artists such as Wu Shanzhuan and Gu Wenda, Xu Bing explored the violence of langauge as embodiment of power. In 1987, Xu Bing began working on Book from the Sky--one of his most influential installation works. The enormous project featured several 500 inch long scrolls and books bound in Song dynasty style, all printed with over 30,000 pseudo Chinese characters cast in model by the artist himself over three years of intense labor. Since Xu Bing carefully incorporated legitimage parts of Chinese characters, the final effect is visually deceiving at first, but as the confronting viewers realize the words are nonsensical, the artwork assumes its meaning. As he deconstrcts the Chinese culture, Xu Bing "eliminates the specific linguistic meaning, and leaves behind the splendid grandiosity, as well as the mystery and symbolism of the authority"--those who are in control of the making and circulation of language.^[5] Xu Bing exhibited this highly controversial work as he completed it: in the Art of Xu Bing exhibition at the China National Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing (1988), in the China Avant-Garde exhibition (1989), and, after he moved to the United States, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

                                                       

[edit] New English Calligraphy

In 1994, after moving to New York City and settling in the East Village, Xu Bing began producing a new breed of pseudo Chinese characters--this time comprised of reworked latin letters--resulting in a new language that appeared to be Chinese but read as English.  Refer to the image (right) where he models his own name in this new form. Xu Bing also completed an instruction manual with specific guidelines for writing this new English-Chinese in the style he invented.
Contrary to the beautifully unperceptible Book from the Sky, in Book from the Ground Xu Bing explores the possibility of maximum accessibility to communication through language. Inspired by signs in public spaces--airports, public transportation, and even toilets--Xu Bing began collecting existing signs while creating new ones, and later synthesized these symbolic languages into a communication software that takes linguistic inputs and produces symbolic outputs. Its installation at MoMA exhibition "Automatic Update" (summer 2007) featured two facing computers seperated by a screen printed with Xu Bing's symbolic language, and inviting viewers to type in English or Chinese to experiment with this new expression, and perhaps communicate with another visitor sitting at the opposite side. 

 

[edit] Site Specific Projects

 Inspired by his printmaking background, Xu Bing employed traditional ink-rubbing techinques to transform a section of the Great Wall into print--a work entitled Ghost Pounding the Wall (1990). The monumental work measures 32 m x 15 m and consists of 29 rubbings, exhibited at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin. The unconventional approach treats the historic site as a found object, blurring its original significance in a post-modern artistic context, and not without a subtle reflection on the monolithic state power.

In 2001, Xu Bing witnessed the September 11 terrorist attack across the river, which inspired an installation called Where does the Dust Itself Collect?, a controversial piece for which he collected the real dust that covered the streets after the attack, tackling destination and tragedy of humanity through Buddhist wit.  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:The Bodhi (True Wisdom) is not like the tree;

The mirror bright is nowhere shining;

As there is nothing from the first,

Where does the dust itself collect?

The body is the Bodhi tree;

The soul is like the mirror bright,

Take heed to keep it always clean,

And let no dust collect upon it.

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 the Sao Paolo Biennial. 

[edit] Emergence & Reception

Since his Book from the Sky installation, Xu Bing has gradually become one of the most recognized contemporary Chinese artists. While resorting to his own academic (print-making) and cultural (Chinese) background, Xu Bing has nonetheless created works that are relevant on much broader levels. Over the years, he has attracted serious attention from both museums and art academies, and is frequently included in textbooks on contemporary art. In 2007, Professor Robert Harrist, Chair of Art History at Columbia University, New York, taught a graduate seminar entitled “The Art of Xu Bing,” and perhaps nothing exemplifies Xu Bing's influence better than his appointment as Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Art's vice president in 2008. 

[edit] Awards & Honors

Xu Bing has won such prestigeous awards, including the MacArthur Award for Genius by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in recognition of his "originality, creativity, self-direction, and capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy."^[6] 

Other notable awards include the Southern Graphics Council Lifetime Achievement Award (2006), Artes Mundi Prize (2004), and the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (2003).

[edit] Exhibitions

Xu Bing's works have been widely exhibited around the world, at international biennials, museums, as well as alternative art institutions. Important exhibitions include the 1989 China Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing, the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), and UCCA's '85 New Wave retrospective in Beijing (2005).

For a complete list of Xu Bing's exhibitions and the artist's CV, click here.

[edit] Acquisitiuons & Auctions

Xu Bing's works have regularly appeared at important auctions of contemporary Chinese art, and his The Living Word (Bird) was sold to gallerist Michael Goedhuis for $408,000, making Xu Bing one of the more commercially successful contemporary Chinese artists.

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China)
The British Museum (London, UK)
The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA)
The Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York
The Kent and Vicki Logan Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA)
Museum Ludwig (Köln, Germany)
Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia)
Queensland Art Gallery (Queensland, Australia)
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Fukuoka, Japan)
Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ)
The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA)

SELECTED PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC)
Embassy of the United States of America (Beijing, China)*
Asia Society Museum (NY, USA)
World Financial Center (Beijing, China)
Equestrian Park (Hong Kong)

*Long-term loan.^[7]

For a comprehensive and updated list of museum collections featuring the work of Xu Bing, click here.

[edit] References

1. ↑ http://www.xubing.com/index.php/chinese/texts/article_2/
2. ↑ http://www.cafa.com.cn/artists/?N=128
3. ↑ http://www.xubing.com/index.php/chinese/texts/seventhstreet/
4. ↑ http://www.xubing.com/index.php/chinese/texts/intrview_cafa/
5. ↑ Gao Minglu. The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art (Buffalo: Buffalo Academy, 2005), 129.
6. ↑ http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.3599935/k.66CA/MacArthur_Foundation_Home.htm
7. ↑ http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/about/C44/