WHAT

Displaying over 70 pieces of works by celebrated artist Xu Bing from different phases of his career, the exhibition includes prints, sketches, installations, manuscripts, videos and documentaries. The exhibition presents the unparalleled artistic language into which the artist translates by means of oriental philosophy and the art classics that shine through the global art world: from writing experience as the essence of Chinese art, from visual fragments collected from social scenes to new conceptual movies and installations, from traditional Chinese characters to the wide-ranging practice of futuristic meta-language, as well as the latest space art practice.

WHY

With the exhibition, the artist focuses on the themes of civilization and language to present a wide range of thoughts and cultures. Breaking boundaries with a ‘universal language’, one of the highlights of the exhibition is the giant installation, ‘Book from the Sky’, which features about 4,000 characters that only appear to be Chinese characters, but ultimately make no sense; yet with its ‘resemblance’ to Chinese text, it is still aesthetically appealing and presents a logical order.