Xu Bing

China

Xu Bing, an artist. He serves as a professor in CAFA. He is widely recognized as the leading conceptual artist of language and semiotics working today. He has always been expanding the boundaries of art with the inventive breakthrough in his artistic creations.

Xu Bing’s work has been shown at the National Art Museum of China, the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the British Museum, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Spain; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Prague, Czech Republic; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Additionally, Xu Bing has participated in the 45th, 51st, and 56th Venice Biennales, the Biennale of Sydney, and the Johannesburg Biennale, among other international exhibitions.

In 1999, Xu Bing was awarded MacArthur Fellowship, the highest creative talent award in the United States in recognition of his “capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy.” In 2003, he was conferred the 14th Fukuoka Asian Culture Award for his “contribution to the development of Asian culture.” In 2004, he won the first Artes Mundi Prize in Wales. Reasons for the jury’s award: “Xu Bing is an artist who can transcend cultural boundaries, convert Eastern and Western cultures, and express his thoughts and practical issues in visual language.” In 2006, the Southern Graphics Council conferred on Xu Bing its lifetime achievement award in recognition of the fact that his “use of text, language and books has impacted the dialogue of the print and art worlds in significant ways.” In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humanities from Columbia University. In 2018, he was awarded the “Xu Beihong-Art Creation Award” by the Education Development Foundation of the CAFA.

The artwork now makes a new appearance on the sustainable textile made from recycled plastic in Indonesia, the host country of the G20. Wherever Phoenix has travelled to, there has been an abundant regeneration of meaning upon its contact with the local socio-historical context and cultural landscapes-every flight of Phoenix marks a new construction of meaning.

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