Xu Bing: Massachusetts College of Art, Boston
Ann W. Lloyd
Xu Bing, a leading member of China¹s New Wave group of dissident artists, has created a large and subtly startling installation titled Language Lost. On the main level of the gallery is an elegant arrangement of over 200 classical Chinese books, lying open on their spines, end to end in precise rows. Swooping overhead are nine paper banners, their ends caught up to form a canopy. Both books and banners are covered with what one assumes is Chinese lettering. In actuality, Xu has painstakingly hand printed every page of these books, every inch of these banners, with over 4000 meticulously carved nonsense characters. These works, originally called A Book from the Sky were made when Xu was still in China, where they confounded, outraged and occasionally amused scholars who searched in vain for one legitimate character.
Xu¹s work in China and his continuing work in this country is an elaborate, sly and subversive joke; a provocation of the absurd intellectual (both eastern and western) reliance on arbitrary language and text to the exclusion of natural phenomena. The rest of Language Lost reveals the lengths to which Xu will go to provoke this paradox. Placed near the edge of the books are sleek black table vitrines, with various books lying open inside. Precise rows resembling text are actually rows of tiny silkworm eggs, in the process of hatching, crawling away, and leaving small blank spots on the page. On a mezzanine above are pedestals each holding various (western) means of mass communication -- among them, a stack of newspapers, a French dictionary and a blinking, scrolling, beeping p.c. laptop. Big fat silkworms crawl upon each item, busily encasing these powerful disseminators of language with delicate white silk. Spun cocoons are being tucked neatly along the edges. Slowly, gently, elegantly, persistently, nature obliterates culture.
(Ann Wilson is an American independent art critic who writes international reviews and features for the New York Times newspaper, Art in America Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and other American art publications. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and has written extensively atbout Xu Bing's work)
Lloyd, Ann Wilson. "Xu Bing: Massachusetts College of Art, Boston." Sculpture 15.1 (1996): 78-79.
Ann W. Lloyd
Xu Bing, a leading member of China¹s New Wave group of dissident artists, has created a large and subtly startling installation titled Language Lost. On the main level of the gallery is an elegant arrangement of over 200 classical Chinese books, lying open on their spines, end to end in precise rows. Swooping overhead are nine paper banners, their ends caught up to form a canopy. Both books and banners are covered with what one assumes is Chinese lettering. In actuality, Xu has painstakingly hand printed every page of these books, every inch of these banners, with over 4000 meticulously carved nonsense characters. These works, originally called A Book from the Sky were made when Xu was still in China, where they confounded, outraged and occasionally amused scholars who searched in vain for one legitimate character.
Xu¹s work in China and his continuing work in this country is an elaborate, sly and subversive joke; a provocation of the absurd intellectual (both eastern and western) reliance on arbitrary language and text to the exclusion of natural phenomena. The rest of Language Lost reveals the lengths to which Xu will go to provoke this paradox. Placed near the edge of the books are sleek black table vitrines, with various books lying open inside. Precise rows resembling text are actually rows of tiny silkworm eggs, in the process of hatching, crawling away, and leaving small blank spots on the page. On a mezzanine above are pedestals each holding various (western) means of mass communication -- among them, a stack of newspapers, a French dictionary and a blinking, scrolling, beeping p.c. laptop. Big fat silkworms crawl upon each item, busily encasing these powerful disseminators of language with delicate white silk. Spun cocoons are being tucked neatly along the edges. Slowly, gently, elegantly, persistently, nature obliterates culture.
(Ann Wilson is an American independent art critic who writes international reviews and features for the New York Times newspaper, Art in America Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and other American art publications. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and has written extensively atbout Xu Bing's work)
Lloyd, Ann Wilson. "Xu Bing: Massachusetts College of Art, Boston." Sculpture 15.1 (1996): 78-79.