The Living Word 鸟飞了
2001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Institution: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Materials: Acrylic
This installation was created for the exhibition ''Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing'' at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The work is mainly comprised of over 400 calligraphic variants of the Chinese character niao, meaning bird, carved in colored acrylic and laid out in a shimmering track that rises from the floor into the air. On the gallery floor Chinese characters in the ''simplified style'' script popularized during the Mao era are used to write out the dictionary definition for niao. The bird/niao characters then break away from the confines of the literal definition and take flight through the installation space. As they rise into the air, the characters ''de-evolve'' from the simplified system to standardized Chinese text and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph based upon a bird's actual appearance. At the uppermost point of the installation, a flock of these ancient characters, in form both bird and word, soar high into the rafters toward the upper windows of the space, as though attempting to break free of the words with which humans attempt to categorize and define them.
The colorful, shimmering imagery of the installation imparts a magical, fairy-tale like quality. Yet the overt simplicity, charm and ready comprehensibility of the work has the underlying effect of guiding the audience to open up the ''cognitive space'' of their minds to the implications of, and relationships between, word, concept, symbol and image. From another perspective, in its use of ancient Chinese pictographs to explore the relationship between conceptual signs and natural objects, the work invites provocative comparisons to one of the most seminal works of Western conceptualism, Joseph Kousth's Three Chairs; and in so doing, points to fundamental differences at the root of these two civilizations.
2001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Institution: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Materials: Acrylic
This installation was created for the exhibition ''Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing'' at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The work is mainly comprised of over 400 calligraphic variants of the Chinese character niao, meaning bird, carved in colored acrylic and laid out in a shimmering track that rises from the floor into the air. On the gallery floor Chinese characters in the ''simplified style'' script popularized during the Mao era are used to write out the dictionary definition for niao. The bird/niao characters then break away from the confines of the literal definition and take flight through the installation space. As they rise into the air, the characters ''de-evolve'' from the simplified system to standardized Chinese text and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph based upon a bird's actual appearance. At the uppermost point of the installation, a flock of these ancient characters, in form both bird and word, soar high into the rafters toward the upper windows of the space, as though attempting to break free of the words with which humans attempt to categorize and define them.
The colorful, shimmering imagery of the installation imparts a magical, fairy-tale like quality. Yet the overt simplicity, charm and ready comprehensibility of the work has the underlying effect of guiding the audience to open up the ''cognitive space'' of their minds to the implications of, and relationships between, word, concept, symbol and image. From another perspective, in its use of ancient Chinese pictographs to explore the relationship between conceptual signs and natural objects, the work invites provocative comparisons to one of the most seminal works of Western conceptualism, Joseph Kousth's Three Chairs; and in so doing, points to fundamental differences at the root of these two civilizations.