Art and Globalism – Xu Bing

Xu Bing is a Chinese born artist, who works in New York. His art practise is an exploration of language. Works ranging from monumental installations to handcraft books, he plays with the written word, usually in the form of Chinese characters. Bing creates installations which questions the notion of communication through language, demonstrating how both meanings and words can be manipulated. A Book from the Sky (1987-90) consisted of over 200 hand printed, and hand bound volumes of a single book. The artist invented approximately 4000 characters resembling Chinese characters. Xu Bing hand carved the typesetting blocks used to make the prints according to traditional Chinese block printing methods. Each block had a unique but meaningless symbol which was used as movable type to print the volumes of books and scrolls that were laid out on the floor or hung from the ceiling. The texts appear to convey ancient wisdom, but in fact they are unintelligible. This artwork recasts the cultural meaning and the authority of language.