XU BING
ARTIST
Book from the Sky.
The whole creating process and the original intention of this piece
is much related to the social progress after Culture Revolution.
I created 4000 Chinese characters, which I called the Fake Chinese Characters.
They are all carved, printed and binding together by myself,
in the very traditional hand-made way.
I want to make they become those exquisite books
which look as if they were extremely improtant
When audience look at/read those books,
they can hardly believe there are no actual context and information in them.
So when evoking the spectator's reading desire,
it refuses your entrance at the same time.
When the spectator tries to read these beautiful words,
he would realize he cannot understand a single word.
At this point, it can offer a kind of question and alert towards people's habitual thinking,
which is how to treat the relationship between us human beings and our culture.
Book from the Sky
Though this piece (Book from the Sky) will not provide you any information,
it has a very strict inner system.
For instance, if you ask me to write a Fake Character immediately,
or create a letter no one could recognize,
it could be quite difficult and odd.
I create them according to a Chinese dictionary compiled during the reign of Kang Xi in the Qing Dynasty
I followed the order of this dictionary
from the character contains least strokes to most strokes
to create my Fake Chinese Character system in parallel
then did various comparisons.
Almost like trying to make a false thing becomes true.
When it reached an unbelievable level,
the tension and power of it would emerge.
At that time many people said it can be told that Xu Bing has a strong base and deep thinking about calligraphy and seal carving.
Because my father asked me to trace the hand writing work to practice everyday.
Then to imitate the classic calligraphy piece.
He is quite strict to me at this point.
Besides, I like it as well.
When I exhibited Book from the Sky, he was ill badly.
But luckily,
we did have the chance to take him on his wheel chair to see it on the gallery.
I was busy carving those 4000 Fake Characters on wooden blocks.
(I remember) Almost his last words to me, last sentence to me is
to say Xu Bing you should not be so obsessed to the carving work.
Because he knew at the end my hands got some issues because of that.
This is his last advice to me.
New English Calligraphy Class
After Book from the Sky, my work began to link a lot with calligraphy.
After finish Book from the Sky,
I went to America.
I went there in 1990.
Moving to America for me is to face a conflict and dislocation between different culture directly.
In this case, the work English Characters appeared.
It is a writing system basically,
The character in this system looks like Chinese,
but in fact it doesn't have any meaning connection with Chinese.
It becomes a character with mask.
FU AI RU SHAN (which means father's love is like mountain)
For instance, like the plate FU AI RU SHAN,
It is written in English Character System.
The calligraphy is actually written with the letters of Chinese Pinyin (the phonetic symbol of Chinese, using Latin letters to represent the pronunciation)
In Chinese tradition, we believe the words, the characters are given from the sky. From the god.
So treating the character in awe is a tradition.
Such context, such traditional sense, the stronger the more convincing they are,
a slight touch,a minor change,
the result can be rather effective and magnificent.
Because it doesn't match the most solid concept in human's mind.
This is my interest of the words, letters, characters.