Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing

Bold, teasingly thought-provoking works of art that challenge preconceptions about written communication will be on view from Oct. 21, 2001 to May 12, 2002 at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (1050 Independence Ave. S.W.) "Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing" is the first major exhibition at the Sackler of work by one of the most universally acclaimed expatriate Chinese avant-garde artists. It is also the first major solo exhibition since 1991 of work by this leader of the late 1980's New Wave art movement in China. Xu is currently based in Brooklyn in New York city and became a winner of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award in 1999.

Xu Bing was born to a college professor and a librarian in Chongqing, China in 1955 and grew up in Beijing during a period of immense political, social and intellectual upheaval. "The complicated lives and cultural experiences of my generation of mainland China have verged on the absurd. My work and my method of thinking have been my search for 'the living word;' my response to the realities of the past and my own cultural experience," Xu says in The Art of Xu Bing: Words Without Meaning, Meaning Without Words. This illustrated book by the exhibition's curator, Britta Erickson, is published as part of the Sackler's Asian Art and Culture series.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976) Xu's scholarly father was forced to parade in the streets wearing a dunce cap and plaque plastered with insults. Labeled the "bastard son of a reactionary father" Xu Bing was sent to the countryside where he worked in the fields, printed a newsletter and cultivated his fascination with calligraphy. "The government was changing the writing system— trying to simplify it—and we were forced to learn new ways of writing characters." At the same time, Xu says, he became acutely aware that "words alone could determine a person's fate." Xu Bing lived through 10 years of socialism, 10 of cultural revolution, and 10 of economic reform and openness during which time he studied printmaking and was awarded a master's degree from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. After receiving critical acclaim, Xu was vilified by conservatives and government representatives during the subsequent period of intellectual repression, and went into self-imposed exile in the West. There, like many an immigrant before him, at the age of 35, he had to learn another way of speaking and writing. "This led to a conflict between my actual level of knowledge and my ability to express that knowledge that can be found in my later works," he says. Xu Bing's art confronts issues of expression and comprehension that are universal.

Xu Bing is famed for his performance art using animals as well as his room-size installations. Both are designed to surprise or even shock the viewer, and provoke profound contemplation about the nature of communication. This exhibition includes both adaptations of older works and new, site-specific installations as well as two interactive elements. Also on view are an ancient Tang dynasty (618 - 907) stele rubbing of calligraphy by the influential master Yan Zhenqing, two rare 1579 volumes of a geography text by Zhu Siben, and Qing dynasty brushes and calligraphic tools from the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art. New works by Xu Bing on view:

• "The Living Word 2001" Six hundred plexiglass characters, painted in a variety of muted colors with gilded sides, are joined together to link lifeless forms of contemporary Chinese script with the living pictography of ancient pre-Han dynasty seal script, thereby describing the pictographic roots of Chinese calligraphy. "The Living Word" begins at floor level with the standardized contemporary character for "bird." Subsequent characters rise upward, evolving progressively into the ancient Chinese pictograph for bird, a headed and winged character.
• "Monkeys Grasp for the Moon" (working title) 2001 A suspended installation, composed of 19 roughly 31-inch, linked fiberglass character forms for the word "monkey" rendered in over a dozen languages, flows from the atrium through the gallery's stairwell down to the third level pool. This work is based on a Chinese folk tale in which a group of monkeys attempt to capture the moon. Linking arms and tails, they form a chain reaching down from the branch of a tree to the moon's shimmering reflection on the surface of a pool, only to discover that it is just that; the things we work hardest to achieve may prove to be nothing but an illusion.
• "Landscripts" (Calligraphic Landscapes), 2001" These three works manipulate the inherent pictorial quality of Chinese characters to create landscapes. In each work, the Chinese character for a word, which is often a pictographic version of the object described, is used repeatedly to create an image of a physical feature (i.e. the character for "mountain" is repeated to build an image of a mountain.) Verbal descriptions akin to those often found in traditional Chinese paintings, are also included. In these works Xu Bing fuses writing, painting, poetry and personal chronicle. Each work is painted in ink on handmade paper that is pressed between two sheets of glass with the top layer acid-etched in order to achieve an opaque quality that slightly obscures or distorts the calligraphy beneath. Three paper sketchbooks created by the artist during the Himalayan trip that inspired his "Landscripts" are also on view.
• "New English Calligraphy: Quotations from Chairman Mao" This artwork combines the traditional Chinese calligraphic format of hanging scrolls and a quasi-Chinese script invented by the artist that can be read by Western audiences, to display quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong about the purpose of art in China's Communist revolution.

• A new adaptation of the artist's "Book from the Sky," arguably the most important work of Chinese art created since the close of the Cultural Revolution. This installation is composed of a room full of open 'books' printed on paper bound with string in the traditional method. These have indigo covers implying that they are scholarly historical works worthy of reverential status within the hierarchy of Chinese literature and are laid out in rows on a low platform. Hand-made walnut boxes made by the artist to store the books are situated at each end of the piece. The books, though quintessentially traditional in every aspect of design and production, are printed using hand-carved moveable type and are composed of thousands of unreadable characters invented by the artist that are rendered in "Song" a popular print style of the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644). Draping down from the ceiling are handscrolls printed with the invented characters. Also on view are handmade printing blocks, knives, brushes and other objects used by the artist to manufacture the books. Photographs show the books' construction as well as reactions of visitors during the first installation of the work.
• "A, B, C. . ., 1991" Thirty six, wall-mounted ceramic cubes representing the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet are on one side and the artist's transliteration to Chinese characters on another. These use sly humor to illustrate the awkwardness encountered in linguistic exchanges between different cultures.

• "Your Surname Please" invites visitors to enter their names into a computer, which translates and prints them in square word calligraphy.
• "Square Word Calligraphy Classroom" (1996-2001) Visitors are invited into a comfortable setting created by the artist to watch an instructional video and practice square word calligraphy for themselves using materials designed and selected by the artist.

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, The W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, the Blakemore Foundation, H. Christopher Luce, and the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Smithsonian Institution's Special Exhibition Fund and the Else Sackler Public Affairs Endowment of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

The Freer Gallery of Art (12th Street and Independence Avenue S.W.) and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (1050 Independence Ave. S.W.) together form the national museum of Asian art for the United States. The Freer also houses a major collection of late 19th and early 20th-century American art. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day except Christmas Day, Dec. 25, and admission is free. Public tours are offered daily. The galleries are located near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information, the public may call 202.357.2700 or TTY 202.357.1729, or visit the galleries' Web site at www.asia.si.edu.