2015

Medium: Clothing label and programming writing

Dimensions of each item: 35.7 x 26.3 x 12 cm

Dimensions of packaging: 41 × 28.5 × 3.5 cm

Exhibition: Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai, 2021-2022. TOKYO Gallery + BTAP, Beijing, 2021

Starting from 2015, Xu Bing has amassed an extensive collection of clothing brand labels from numerous private enterprises. When brought together, these labels reflect the history of their entrepreneurship, development, bottlenecks, transformations, and acquisitions. Furthermore, we can perceive the brand names as carriers of people’s hopes and aspirations for the future. For this project, a “poem writing software” has been developed. The computer program searches for appropriate words and sentences among fashion label tags to create a Seven-Character Poem which is later compiled into the collection. This process also symbolizes an advancement in the creation of an “artist book.”

2000

Medium: Roll of uncut cigarette paper, printed with book of poetry, With the Poets in Smokeland (1890), and wooden crank mechanism

Size: 24 1/8 x 29 7/8 x 12 in.

Exhibition: The Tobacco Project: A Series of Installations Created by Xu Bing, The Duke Homestead &  Tobacco Museum, and The Perkins Library Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina，USA, 2000

                  Xu Bing Tobacco Project: Shanghai, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China, 2004

                  Tobacco Project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011

2000

Medium: Custom-cut "American Spirit" brand cigarattes, Chinese texts from Daodejing and Chairman Mao's words handwritten in ink, encased in hinged wooden box

Size: Case (closed): 3 1/2 x 3 7/8 in

Exhibition: The Tobacco Project: A Series of Installations Created by Xu Bing, The Duke Homestead &  Tobacco Museum, and The Perkins Library Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA, 2000

                  Xu Bing Tobacco Project: Shanghai, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China, 2004

                  Tobacco Project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011

2000

Medium: Cardboard matches, printed with Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” (1920)

Size: Each: 1 5/8 x 1 3/4 in.

Exhibition: The Tobacco Project: A Series of Installations Created by Xu Bing, The Duke Homestead &  Tobacco Museum, and The Perkins Library Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina，USA, 2000

                  Xu Bing Tobacco Project: Shanghai, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China, 2004

                  Tobacco Project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011

2000

Medium: “American Spirit” brand cigarette boxes, artist’s father’s medical records, plastic desk calendar frame

Size: 7/8 x 7 1/2 in

Exhibition: The Tobacco Project: A Series of Installations Created by Xu Bing, The Duke Homestead & Tobacco Museum, and The Perkins Library Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA, 2000

                  Tobacco Project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011

2020 

Materials: Book, silkworm

Dimensions: 1.5 (H) x 52 (L) x 42 (W) cm

Exhibition Location: Asia Society Triennial, New York, U.S.A.

1987－1991

Medium: Mixed media installation/ hand-printed books and scrolls printed from blocks inscribed with ''false'' characters

Produced over the course of four years, this four-volume treatise features thousands of meaningless characters resembling Chinese. Each character was meticulously designed by the artist in a Song-style font that was standardized by artisans in the Ming dynasty. In this immersive installation, the artist hand-carved over four thousand moveable type printing blocks. The painstaking production process and the format of the work, arrayed like ancient Chinese classics, were such that the audience could not believe that these exquisite texts were completely illegible. The work simultaneously entices and denies the viewer’s desire to read the work.

As Xu Bing has noted, the false characters “seem to upset intellectuals,” provoking doubt in established systems of knowledge. Many early viewers would spend considerable time scrutinizing the texts, fixedly searching for genuine characters amidst the illegible ones.

1994－1996

Materials: Mixed-media installation; instructional video, model books, copybooks, ink, brushes, brush stands, blackboard

The intention of this installation is to simulate a classroom-like setting modeled on adult literacy classes, within a gallery or museum space. Desks are supplied with small containers of ink, brushes, and a copybook with instructions on the basic principles of 'New English Calligraphy, a writing system invented and designed by the artist. A video, Elementary Square Word Calligraphy Instruction, is played on a monitor in the exhibition space, capturing the audience’s attention and inviting them to participate in the class. Once seated at the desks, the audience is instructed to seize their brushes and the lesson in New English Calligraphy begins. 

Essentially, New English Calligraphy is a fusion of written English and written Chinese. The letters of an English word are slightly altered and arranged in a square word format so that the word takes on the ostensible form of a Chinese character, yet remains legible to the English reader. As participants attempt to recognize and read the words,their ingrained thinking patterns are challenged. Accordingly, the artist strongly believes in the significance of disrupting habitual thinking. While undergoing this process of estrangement and re-familiarization with one's written language, the audience is reminded that the sensation of distance between other systems of language and one's own is largely self-induced.

2001

Medium: mixed media installation/ silkworm

Location: Eslite Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan

2000

Materials: printed post-its.

This work was created for an exhibition at the Ginza Graphic Gallery in Japan examining the dynamic changes taking place in the book industry in the countries that utilize Chinese characters in their language systems, namely Japan, Korea, and China. Xu's work focuses on the conept of language and digitalization. The title of the work is derived from a passage in the classic 15th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, in which the supernatural monkey, Sun Wukong, fiercely battles with a demon but finds himself on the losing end. Employing the mystical technique of ''shen wai shen'' (which can roughly be translated as self-cloning in modern terms), Sun Wukong takes a strand of his own hair and places it in his mouth, thereby releasing thousands of miniature replicas of himself. These tiny clones then join forces to overcome and ultimately defeat the demon. 

Using Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, respectively, to transcribe passages from the tale, the artist displays each version on separate panels mounted on the wall, with each character inscribed on its own small, square notebook. Audience members are invited to freely tear off sheets of characters, unexpectedly revealing underneath a word written in a different language. This intentional random mixing of languages in this artwork creates a narrative that resermbles a collage of different texts. This juxtaposition of languages generates a sense of cacophony, reflecting the complexity of linguistic diversity in a multicultural world. However, amidst this apparent chaos, there are moments when the random mixing of words restores a sense of normalcy and coherence, highlighting the interconnectedness of languages. 

On the reverse side of each sheet of paper, Xu Bing's website address, http://www.xubing.com, is inscribed. One implication of the work is the notion that with the facilitation of internet technology, one can attain something of the magical ability for self-generation, bearing semblance to that of the supernatural monkey’s own methods of endless reproduction in the story. 

1992

Medium: Mixed media installation / books bound in traditional Chinese and in Western way, tables, chairs

In an investigation of the cultural function and meaning of language, this installation combines 300 volumes of books each previously fabricated by Xu Bing. Dubbed ''problem books'' by the artist, these encompass the works Post Testament, bound in classical Western style, and Book From the Sky, bound in a traditional Chinese manner. While both sets of volumes may initially appear to be traditional, each one is actually a contemporary text designed to be incomprehensible to the reader. The 600 volumes are piled onto a reading table with dimensions of 56 feet by 12 feet, serving as fractured emblems of two cultured systems of knowledge. Above the table, a large sign reading “QUIET” invites the audience to sit and peruse the books. The contrast between the ordered public reading space, emphasized by the “QUIET” warning, and the chaos of the information-less books scattered on the table points to significant cultural implications. 

1992－1993

Medium: Installation of printed and bound books with religious and secular texts

Dimension: varies; 35 × 45 × 8 cm each book (closed)

This installation consists of 300 specially printed and bound volumes titled Post Testament. Within these books is an unusual hybrid text, combining the King James’ version of the New Testament with a trashy, contemporary novel by alternating each word of the two texts. This unique arrangement requires the reader to skip every word in order to read either complete text. Regardless of which narrative the reader follows, the visual presence of the other narrative cannot be avoided, leaving a lasting imprint in the reader’s mind. The hybrid text thus presents a new and unconventional reading pattern. With Post Testament, Xu Bing attempts to experiment with the relation between avant-garde literature and visual art.