28 November 2003 – 4 January 2004
Curated by Karen Smith in Partnership with Chinese Arts Centre
Commissioned by Chinese Arts Centre
Chinese Arts Centre’s new building launches with the first UK solo show by leading Chinese born artist Xu Bing, a leading figure in the international art world, now based in New York. His works and installation pieces, and his ongoing exploration of language, have brought him worldwide attention.
Based in New York, Xu Bing has created a remarkable visual language that never fails to provoke delight and intrigue. At first sight the viewer perceives the language to be Chinese, but on closer inspection one realises that it is actually English.
At Chinese Arts Centre, Xu Bing will create a 3-D installation, which continues his precise and playful exploration of text and language. Using the word ‘Bird’ as his inspiration he creates a landscape in which characters evolve and eventually take flight.
One of Xu Bing’s most ambitious projects was Ghosts Pounding the Wall, a series of rubbings of the Great Wall. The project took two years to complete, with over 100 assistants and totalled 1,500 metres in length. Case Study of Transference is one of his most infamous pieces, consisting of two mating pigs with the female covered in Chinese characters and the male with English letters in a pigpen strewn with books.
His work has been exhibited widely internationally including the Arthur M Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. (2002); Xu Bing: Book from the Sky and Classroom Calligraphy at the National Gallery of Prague (2000) and Xu Bing: Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2001). His work has also appeared at the Sydney Biennale, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2000); MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999); Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (1999); Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany (1999); The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1998) and the Venice Biennale (1993). He also featured in The First Guangzhou Triennial – Reinterpretation: A decade of Experimental Chinese Arts 1990-2000 and the Shanghai Biennale (2002).
www.xubing.com
Beijing-based Karen Smith has curated the Xu Bing exhibition in partnership with Chinese Arts Centre.
