Woodblock hand-printed on handmade Chinese paper, wooden case
Xu Bing Book from the Sky (detail), 1991 Woodblock hand-printed on handmade Chinese paper, wooden case 50 x 33.3 x 10 cm Starting from 1987, Xu Bing carved over 4,000 woodblocks of pseudo-Chinese characters to make a book named Book from the Sky, which is purposefully undecipherable to its readers. By borrowing from traditional methods and wisdom to convey the steadfastness of Chinese culture, the work became something whose external and internal essence are at odds, allowing “hyper-realism” and “abstraction” to become as one, solemn and absurd.
