An Introducation

Xu Bing describe himself as the generation of Chinese artists who have lived in ten years of socialist education, ten years of cultural revolution, ten years of open door policy and ten years of living in the west. The experiences gather during these time have attribute to his unique and inventive concepts.

Since Xu Bing's breakthrough project 'A Book from the Sky' exhibited in the infamous "China/ Avant-Garde" exhibition more than ten years ago in Beijing, he is continue to challenge the viewer's perception. He justified his work as a "virus that disrupts the habits and tendencies of human mind. Since human mind have already a perception of appearance and cultural concepts, the mind become lazy. In order for a person to understand Xu's works, he/she would have to disrupt his/her own perception. It's the only way for a person can open their mind to new idea." We can comprehend his idea from his proudest work 'New English Calligraphy'. A system of writing English or any alphabet base language to resemble Chinese characters. His text might seem foreign at first, but is intelligible to those who read English, although incomprehensible to non-English speaker, to whom the ideograms might at first appear to communicate.