Book from the sky 天书 ---- Xu Bing

There is a part in me that's rooted in the traditional Chinese culture, especially Chinese calligraphy which I practiced for a couple of years when I was young. Another reason I'm so connected with it is that my dad is a calligraphy artist, you can easily find all sorts of calligraphy brushes, papers, ink and etc. in my house since as long as I can remember.

So at first I felt a little bit uncomfortable when I saw Xu Bing's work 'Book from the sky' which was made with numerous FAKE Chinese characters he invented by himself in traditional Chinese calligraphy form.

Maybe I shouldn't have told you those are all fake characters at the very beginning, so all of you who don't know Chinese could be amazed for a while and be over-whelmed with the mysterious, ancient eastern atmosphere the artist created.

This is one of the script pages for the previous art work.

It said here that the artist questions the "idea of communicating meaning through language, demonstrating how both meanings and written words can be easily manipulated." I thought about it and I do not think that's what it is. Simply because none of those characters makes any sense to me as a Chinese. The artist is not trying to communicate any kind of meaning through those characters at all. In China, people like to make a joke about writing which is hard to read or understand using the word 天书, which is the title of the artist's work, to gently laugh about the person who wrote it. Here the artist just took this common folk's joke, and transformed it into a beautiful art that not only Chinese people can understand. I looked some of the other works of Xu Bing, I found the similar things; like the work 鬼打墙 'Ghosts Pounding the Wall' which is also a folk saying in China to describe people who are trapped and lost walking in the dark, repeating the some route, feeling trapped with walls around, because the ghosts are tricking them and preventing them from getting out.

To me, the artist just wants to bring the interesting eastern culture to the west with his adept printmaking skill. I think for a lot of Chinese artists who are living in the USA, the culture and country that's influencing the world the most, they will feel more or less the need to show their own culture and to identify themselves, to let the westerns know about themselves a little more. The next artwork shows it too.

'Square Calligraphy Classroom', it's a classroom for foreigners to learn to practice the so-called 'New English Calligraphy' invented by the artist.

Here it is, the artist's system of English letters written with calligraphy. I don't know a single character on the page except some strokes and components. So don't think you are learning Chinese, you are not!

'The Glassy Surface of a Lake', is probably the most romantic work of his.