Renowned Chinese artist Xu Bing to discuss visual, written languages

Renowned
Chinese artist Xu Bing to discuss visual, written languages

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BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

Xu Bing, the
Chinese artist who once covered ceilings and walls with
books and giant scrolls written in 4,000 unreadable characters
(thanks to a new language he created), will share his thoughts
on language and art at 6 p.m. Feb. 11 on the Rice campus.

Considered to
be China’s most well-known installation artist, Xu
will present “Art of Xu Bing: Between Visual and Written
Languages” in the Shell Auditorium at the Jesse H.
Jones Graduate School of Management.

Xu will discuss
his artistic experiments with pseudo-writing and how it
serves to complicate the understanding of culture and communication.

The lecture is
co-sponsored by several entities at Rice — the Transnational
China Project of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public
Policy, the Department of Art and Art History, the Dean
of Humanities and the Asian Studies Program — and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Xu’s 1987
masterpiece, titled “A Book from the Sky,” consisted
of large scrolls that explored the porous boundary between
sense and nonsense.

It featured hundreds
of neatly arranged “books” printed in pseudo-characters,
illegible and yet visually compelling — a reflection
of Xu’s recurring alienation from language that began
in his childhood.

The son of a
professor and a librarian, Xu was raised mostly in Beijing.
In his early youth Xu was surrounded by books he could not
read. During China’s Cultural Revolution, Xu was sent
to the countryside to learn Mao’s new official language,
which changed often to meet official doctrine.

Upon his return
home, he had to learn his parents’ language and copy
classical Chinese characters every day — a practice
that his father thought would instill discipline.
Xu studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts,
where he received a master’s degree in fine arts in
1987. After the landmark exhibition “China/Avant-Garde”
at the National Gallery in 1989, Xu emerged as one of the
foremost figures in China’s experimental art scene.

He moved to the
United States in 1990, where he currently lives in Brooklyn,
N.Y.
His work has been the subject of numerous critical and scholarly
publications, including “Public Culture” and “Boundary
2.”

The Smithsonian
Institution in Washington featured an exhibit of his work
in 2001.
Xu received the MacArthur Award for Genius from the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1999 in recognition
of his “originality, creativity, self-direction and
capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly
in printmaking and calligraphy.”

Rice students,
faculty and staff who want to attend Xu’s presentation
must request a reservation by Friday, Feb. 7, by sending
their full name and e-mail address to <tnchina@rice.edu>.

Seating is limited
and will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
R.S.V.P.s will be confirmed by e-mail.