I found a copy of Yishu - Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art in the library, published by Art & Collecution Group Ltd in Taiwan. i have seen some of the works in the exhibition of chinese contemporary art in the UCSD art gallery last year. i found them impressive then, and am exhilarated to see them again now.

we can look at some of the works in this and my subsequent entries. today i will look at xu bing's works.

xu bing was born and educated in china, has been through cultural revolution, and received an MFA from the central academy of the arts. after many works had been censored by the central government, he moved to new york, and continued to live and work there till today. he appears to be one of the group of chinese artists/musicians in whom i've newly developed a strong interest, i.e., whose who were trained and were active in the 80's immediately after the end of cultural revolution. (another example will be tan dun.) the clash of completely contradicting values at the interface between eras gave them distinctive world views and philosophy of composition.

the interview in Yishu mentioned a number of his works. one of them is a book from the sky, which was created while the artist was still in china.

(i forgot to bring a camera with me. well i have to type the thing down. but it's worth reading.)

Q: starting from your earliest works, such as the creration of a nonsensical language in a book from the sky, the nonsensical theme has been prevalent in your work. how did you first conceive of this theme, and why were you interested in this notion of "meaninglessness"?

A: Acutally, these ideas arose from my personal experiences in china. for one, i felt a sense of boredom and cultural ennui, a feeling that culture was meaningless. this was at a time when mainland china was going through a period of "culture fever". that was during the eighties, and the cultural revolution had just ended. government policies were becoming more relaxed, and many new forms of culture were flourishing on the mainland. we were simultaneously flooded with new books and ideologies, from traidtional chinese thought to contemporary western culture. this period produced a profound effect on the thining of chinese youth. i was a graduate student who participated in the many cultural debates and popular movements during those days . after attending so many events, i became tired of the process and felt quite disillusioned by culture. during the cultural revolution there was a starvation of knowledge and culture; once the revolution ended, ther was an overabundance of it. somebody who overeats right after severe hunger will end up feeling very sick. there was a huge gap betweeen our expectations for culture and what was received in the end. this resulted in a feeling of emptiness and powerlessness in the face of culture.

Q: when you were a student, what were your thoughts and feelings about the foreign ideologies coming into china?

A: it was a very ambiguous experience because many of the new ideologies were presented in fragments, in little bits and pieces. the ideologies being discussed wer very incomplete. there was no way to ground the ideas, nor was there a clear direction for the future. all we knew at the time was that we were coming out of our old ways of thinking and our old ways of art making. but we had no idea of how to proceed or where the new art would take us. it was a period of chaos and confusion. speaking from my personal experience, it was very easy to feel bewildered and lost.

(comment: i believe, his personal experience is easily everyone else's.)


according to xu bing, the work was censored because the government was over-interpreting it's political message while the work itself had little such intention.


Q: Why did the chinese government censor your works at that time?

A: at the time, the chinese government was still strict in its policies, especially after the events of TAM square. before TAM, the poliecies were more relaxed and therefore many young intellectuals and artists came onto the scene a book from teh sky also appeared at this tiem. yet shortly after, the TAM protests bro out and the poitical crackdown caused an extreme reversal of teh stae's relaxed policies. contemporary artists came under political critique. while a lot of contemporary art appears on teh surface to be whimsical adn transparent, a book from the sky was different because people could not figure out what it was saying, yet it was meticulous, rigorous, and monumental in effect. officials thus assumed that it embodied the most sinister elements of contemporary art and singled it out for public critique. the authorities branded it as one work that embodied all ten wrongdoings of new wave art. (comment: i'm confused here. was there a new wave movement in chinese contemporary art? i've only heard of the new wave mvm in french cinema la Nouvelle Vague.)

Q: instead of exposing the formal structures of language through nonsensical characters, square word calligraphy

creates work with meaning and functional use. can you comment on this departure from your earlier works?
(comment: to clarify, square word calligraphy is a way of writing english words in chinese strokes assembled in a way similar to the square characters in chinese writing. but the words together, reads like an english sentence.)

A: actually, this work involves my artistic experimentation in the contemporary art scenen of the west. i became troubled by the hierarchical relationship between contemporary art and its public audience. when people enter an art museum it is as if they have entered a place of worship. too many audiences feel bewildered by the art they see and react with a feeling of guilt, as if their confusion reflected their own lack of education in art of culture. in fact, many works of contemporary art art lacking in thought and creativity, although they present a shocking appearance to teh audience. i hope that my works are clear and easily accessible to audiences. once they are engaged in it, i hope that the audience can discover the deeper meanings in teh work and become inspired in their own ways of thinking.

Q: How do you explain the hierarchical relationship that has been established between contemporary art and its public audience?

A: i think this relationship is a basic aspect of contemporary art. one can trace it to duchamp, who levelled the relationship between art and life. this was a powerful revolution, however, in the process of levelling the relationship of art and life, he left the artist with a certain privileged status. because i am an "artist", anything i do is automatically given value and maning. this notion actually caused the decline of creative though within contemporary art. since i have this status as "artist", anything i do is vlid. i'm making art if i sweep the floor as a performance artist, and this may be considered different from a regular sanitation worker who sweeps the floor. in reaity, there isn't a whole lot of difference.

(comment: i think his view on the hierarchy is quite objective. i have heard enough of sweeping statements about contemporary art. mainly one side saying that modern art is all crap and the other saying that the first side is illiterate in art appreciation. in fact, there are definitely artists who do not live up to the creative and serious thinking of avant garde, but there are still a great many of them who take the business of creativity seriously, whose works involve a great deal of hard work.)