¾«¶«AV

Library Information and Colophon

Biography

Xu Bing

(1955- )
Chinese

Xu Bing is a conceptual artist whose work often revolves around language, writing, and books. The book Post Testament by Xu Bing in ¾«¶«AV’s Special Collections consists of a hybrid text in which every other word is taken from the King James Version of the New Testament and a contemporary romance novel inside a large leather bound tome that was hand-printed on rag paper.

Xu Bing was born in Chongqing, (Sichuan Province) in 1955 and grew up in Beijing surrounded by books at Beijing University where his parents worked.1 He obtained a BA in printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing in 1981 where he then stayed on as an instructor, earning his MFA in 1987. He moved to the United States in 1990 upon the invitation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Xu Bing currently serves as the Vice President of CAFA and lives in New York.2

The work Post Testament confounds the reader by modifying the expected. Since the Bible is an exceedingly well-known and loaded text, by changing the expected Post Testament acts as a decontextualzation of a text rife with cultural stigmas. This allows the reader to analyze the work in a new light. Even if the reader tries to just read the romance novel or just the Testament portion of the book “the visual presence of the other narrative cannot be avoided, creating a visual imprint on the reader's mind. The hybrid text thus generates a new and abnormal reading pattern. At the same time and on another level of cognition, it creates a kind of third narrative that limns the border between avant-garde literature and visual art.”3Xu Bing was invited to the University of Wisconsin in 1993, where he installed his first significant work, “Book from the Sky”. While there in residence he created Post Testament with the University students. The work makes direct reference to the Bible located in his hotel room and books at the porn shop on the same street.

Footnotes

1 Jerome Silbergeld. “Introduction.” Persistence-Transformation: Text as Image in the Art of Xu Bing. Jerome Silbergeld, Dora C.Y. Ching, Eds. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2006.) 19.

2 “Bio.” Xu Bing Official Website. 4 December 2008.

3 “Post Testament.” Xu Bing Official Website. 4 December 2008.

References and Links

Chiu, Melissa and Zheng Shengtian. Art and China’s Revolution. New York: Asia Society; New Haven: In association with Yale University, 2008.

Erickson, Britta. The Art of Xu Bing: Words Without Meaning, Meaning Without Words. Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; Seattle: In Association with the University of Washington Press, 2001.

Silbergeld, Jerome. Persistence-Transformation: Text as Image in the Art of Xu Bing. Jerome Silbergeld, Dora C.Y. Ching, Eds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Smith, Karen. Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China. Zurich: Scalo; New York: Distributed in North America by Prestel, 2006.

“Xu Bing.” Art and Culture. 4 December 2008.

Xu Bing Official Website. 4 December 2008.

Wingfield, Jeremy. The Xu Bing Phenomenon. ¾«¶«AV Thesis, 2001.

Word Play. 4 December 2008.

Other Books in Special Collections by this Author