SOLD OUT – The Scent of Fresh Ink : Xu Bing and the Enigma of Language

China as a country remains an enigma to the modern West, as does the contemporary “modern” art being produced there in large amounts. The artwork, as it is perceived to Western eyes, has similar and even correlative relationships to that which is seen in galleries and museums throughout Europe and America. However, is the work really what we think it is? Does it derive from the same well of 20th-century theoretical imperatives? And does it truly suggest understanding through a common theoretical language?

Explore these and other questions as they relate to the development of Chinese contemporary art through the role of ink—as both a medium and a philosophy. Chinese art emphasizes the role of the philosophical traditions from which ink painting stems. In contrast, Western terminology that defines abstraction, modernism, and Post Modernism prove meaningless when considering contemporary Chinese painting.

Xu Bing, a Chinese-born artist, moved to the United States in 1990. He currently resides in Beijing, where he serves as the vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is best known for his commitment to printmaking art and his soaring installations, as well as his creative artistic use of language, words, and text and how they have affected our understanding of the world. He received a MacArthur Foundation grant in July 1999, presented to him for “originality, creativity, self-direction, and capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy.”

This program is presented with the University of Minnesota in collaboration with the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and supported by the University of Minnesota’s Arts and Humanities Imagine Fund to promote collaboration, interdisciplinary dialogue, and greater public engagement with the university in collaboration with educational and art institutions in the Twin Cities.