Complete Showing of Iconic “Book from the Sky” Installation

Rarely Exhibited in its Entirety

 

Xu Bing: Writing Between Heaven and Earth opens on Saturday, February 21 at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU.   Acclaimed worldwide for propelling contemporary Chinese art onto the global stage with his epic installations, Xu Bing has been invited from Beijing to Miami to present a lecture on February 21st from 4:00-5:00 p.m. and the opening reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public. The artist’s lecture is at the University’s Graham Center GC140 (seating is expected to fill quickly, registration in advance is recommended to [email protected]).

The exhibition encompasses 5,000 square feet and features the artist’s iconic installations plus newer artworks that provoke viewers to challenge their perceptions of cultural identity and language, including a never-before seen artwork that Xu Bing is creating specifically for this exhibition at the Frost Art Museum (through May 24 at 10975 S.W. 17 Street, Miami,  FL 33199 – link to map/directions and hours).

“The Frost Art Museum is thrilled to present Xu Bing: Writing Between Heaven and Earth,” says the museum’s Director, Dr. Jordana Pomeroy. “We have devoted all of the space in our Grand Galleries to offer this rare opportunity to view the complete, iconic Book from the Sky in its entirety alongside a majestic series of powerful recent installations, in addition to the artwork Xu Bing created to debut at the Frost Art Museum.”

 

Due to its massive scope and size, only a handful of museums in the world have shown the complete Book from the Sky including all of the hundreds of original components and handmade carvings, which took the artist four years to complete.

“This exhibition crowns the Frost Art Museum’s triumvirate series Three Giants of Contemporary Chinese Art,” adds Dr. Pomeroy, “which began last summer with Simon Ma, continued through Art Basel season with Wang Qingsong, and culminates now with Xu Bing – one of the world’s most acclaimed Chinese artists.”

Trained in China during the 1970s as a Master Printmaker, Xu Bing was born in Chongqing in 1955 and grew up in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. A core tenet of his work is the preservation of Chinese culture and traditions. Chinese characters and traditional landscapes feature prominently in his work.

The artist is recognized globally for his large-scale installations about language and text …

 

This exhibition brings together Xu Bing’s Shu-related masterpieces to demonstrate the art of writing as image. The character Shu  (書) in ancient Chinese signifies books, written characters and the act of writing.

This exhibition presents the Shu art of Xu Bing, from his Tian Shu (Book from the Sky) to Di Shu (Book from the Ground) with several installations in between.  Together, they create a grand, Zen-like tranquil space that draws viewers deep into a serene atmosphere to engage with the artworks.

The exhibition at the Frost Art Museum is curated by Dr. Lidu Yi, a professor and historian of Chinese art at FIU. “The thought-provoking artworks of Xu Bing will challenge viewers to reconsider their perceptions about written language and cultural identity” says Dr. Yi. “This exhibition focuses on Chinese indigenous heritage, Chinese characters and traditional landscape painting.”

The focal installation is the complete Book from the Sky – four years in the making – featuring more than 4,000 illegible Chinese characters invented by the artist, meticulously hand-carved pieces, more than 160 volumes of hand-made woodblock-printed books, huge scrolls hanging from the ceiling and poster-sized wall panels resembling propaganda-style posters.

 

… viewers will personally experience Square Word Calligraphy Classroom (by using traditional calligraphy brushes and ink) and will see how Chinese students learn to write Chinese characters by tracing …

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