Xu Bing

Using traditional printmaking and calligraphy to explore dimensions for contemporary Chinese art, Xu Bing is known for seminal works that deal with language and meaning. Whether inventing an entire new language of visual symbols, merging Chinese calligraphic strokes with the English alphabet, or re-creating ink paintings and sculptures using found objects and natural debris, Xu Bing explores contemporary social concerns with a universality that transcends any one culture or place.

Hailing from an intellectual family and living through decades of cultural change in China, Xu Bing addresses a broad array of salient social and environmental issues in his work. For the internationally exhibited Phoenix Project (2008), the artist captures the complexities and contradictions of rapid economic growth, creating a pair of monumental sculptures of the mythic phoenix out of waste from construction sites around Beijing’s burgeoning financial district. Building his work from the tools and building materials found at these sites—hardhats, shovels, bamboo, steel, piping—Xu starkly contrasts prosperous development with the impoverished conditions of migrant construction laborers, recognizing the unseen struggle and creation of refuse behind the veneer of China’s fortune. In Xu’s representation of the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth and his use of raw materials and flawed edges, the Phoenix Project is witness to the complex connection between labor, the environment, and economic development.

HT22 presents Xu Bing’s monumental work Background Story: Mount Lu (2015) at the Honolulu Museum of Art, which holds a notable collection of Asian art that includes Chinese paintings by masters Hong Ren, Shen Zhou, and Wen Zhenming. The first iteration of Background Story appeared in 2004 at the Museum For East Asian Art in Cologne, Germany. Using a lightbox as a virtual stage, Xu Bing visually replicated a collection of lost Chinese and Japanese ink paintings looted from Berlin museums by Russian troops at the end of World War II, reminding viewers that works held in museums and the institutions themselves often have complex histories. In his use of natural debris and found objects such as plastic bags and dried plants to render the wash and lines of an ink painting, the artist exposes a narrative that highlights how landscapes are perceived, both in the mind and in reality. Where the façade of the lightbox image speaks to formal beauty, the ‘background story’ is one that reveals a more complex narrative of cultural aesthetics.

Background Story: Mount Lu pays tribute to the eponymous panoramic painting by Zhang Daqian, the renowned Chinese landscape painter of the twentieth century. In the Chinese literati tradition, landscape is revered as an idealized mindscape and a philosophical depiction of the spirit and wisdom derived from nature. Zhang Daqian was also famous for his master forgeries of work by other iconic Chinese painters—unlike the Western stance that views copying as derivative or as plagiaristic, the activity was appreciated in Chinese tradition as a form of tribute and learning. Hence, in re-presenting this master work, Xu Bing alludes to the conflicting attributes of imitation and renders his version of Mount Lu through an illusory image composed by shadows of corn husks, linen string, rice paper, plastic bags, and dried leaves, all placed behind frosted glass. The loss of focus on the brushstroke and hand of the artist redirects the viewer to consider the origin of the debris, raising present-day environmental concerns around waste. All at once, formal beauty is contrasted with fragments of discarded and unwanted material, providing a version of landscape that is disturbingly beautiful while also being a call to action. In this contradiction, the work resonates with conflicting conditions found in Hawai‘i, where its reputation as a ‘paradise’ is placing acute environmental pressure on finite natural resources.