The work of New York-based artist Xu Bing, highly regarded because of his innovative and playful use of Chinese and English calligraphy, or what appears to be akin to it, will be on show in London at the Albion Gallery. This is Xu Bing's largest and most comprehensive gallery show to date and will bring together nearly 40 works as well as the more recent Book from the Ground, shown at MoMA, New York, in 2007.
Xu Bing's profile has risen steadily since he first came into the limelight in the 1980s. Recently he was named Vice-President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. It's not clear whether he will move to Beijing permanently because of the job.
Xu Bing is fascinated by language and has developed his own hybrid 'language' from English words reconfigured to appear as Chinese characters, a device employed by other artists, too, but not quite as effectively or innovatively as in the case of Xu Bing. He also creates landscapes drawn out of words, called landscripts, and was the first winner of the Artis Mundi prize in 2004 and now is a judge for the 2008 award.
Xu Bing's landscript works are vistas literally drawn out of words. In place of descriptive brush marks he arranges Chinese characters in such a way that the character for stone (shi), for example, is repeated in different sizes to indicate the area of the landscape which is a cliff. Clusters of the character cao (grass), represent verdant fields in intricate landscapes.
Xu Bing’s Square Word Calligraphy is his way of writing (in brush stoke calligraphy) what appear to be Chinese characters. With a bit of practice, however, they can be read as what they really are – each character is made up of Roman letters spelling the words from texts which have a particular resonance for the artist. The texts include poems by Longfellow and Emily Dickinson, the sayings of Chairman Mao, and even nursery rhymes.
Book from the Ground, above, is Xu Bing’s ongoing experimental quest for a common language of international signs and symbols. Xu Bing has collected all the existing icons, pictograms or signs which are displayed in airports, stations and other public spaces. These everyday symbols, which give instructions (no entry, emergency exit, cross here etc.), have been turned into components of a new script, accessible to speakers of any language. Users can interact with a computer to write their own sentences in this new language. SR
Book from the Ground shown at MoMA, 2007, mixed media Installation with two computers running Book from the Ground interactive chat software, separated by a wall of ‘milky glass’; one side comprising found icons, the other side edited icons.
