Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Xu Bing: Landscape Landscript

(from 28th Feb until 19th May 2013)

Explore the innovative landscape work of one of China’s most renowned contemporary artists.

See all 97 related objects

Detail of Family Plots, by Xu Bing, Beijing, 1988 (Museum no. LI2007.61)

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Introduction

Xu Bing was born in Chongqing in 1955 and grew up in Beijing where both his parents worked at Peking University. In 2008 he returned there after nearly twenty years in the United States to become Vice President of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he himself trained in the late 1970s.

He has exhibited across Asia, the US, Europe and Australia, and much of his work deals with the connections between different cultures. He explores these through language and particularly through re-inventing scripts. In this exhibition Xu Bing takes the pictorial qualities of the Chinese written language to create a new painting method. His new works comment on the Chinese landscape painting tradition and on the Chinese relationship with nature.

Xu Bing’s landscapes also show connections between China and other cultures. The first gallery exhibits drawings and prints that reflect different stages in China’s engagement with the West. The second displays his Landscripts while the third gallery shows Xu Bing’s dedication to teaching and to using landscape art to improve global environmental awareness.

Xu Bing, Beijing, January 2013.

Eastern Art Online presents an online version of Xu Bing: Landscape Landscript to provide a taste of the exhibition on display in the Ashmolean's Special Exhibitions Galleries. It enables visitors to browse and search all exhibition objects and their high-quality zoomable images online. It also links through to multimedia content that has been created especially for the show that features behind-the-scenes footage, artist interviews, curator podcasts, and other information and activities. A fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition is also available to purchase from the exhibition shop, or online here. All text from the exhibition is also available in Chinese here.