Xu Bing travelled extensively throughout China in the late 1970s and particularly the early 1980s. He always carried a sketchbook. The sketch on this page opening is of a hillside in the northwestern province of Gansu. It shows cultivation of the land, and tyre marks, but no figures. It is typical of Xu Bing’s landscape drawing that traces of human occupation are shown without any representation of people themselves.
Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 28 February-19 May 2013, Xu Bing Landscape/Landscript: Nature as Language in the Art of Xu Bing, Shelagh Vainker, ed. (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2013), no. 32 on p. 68, pp. 23, 81, 96, illus. p. 68 fig. 32
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