74.

Xu Bing (b. 1955)

My New Book

1993-98

Woodblock print

35 x 50 cm

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Xu Bing gained international recognition in the late 1980s with his conceptual installation, Book from the Sky, composed of books and banners printed with 4000 invented, unreadable characters. His point is the unreliability of written language. In this print, the left-hand page is incomprehensible, with many words invented. Some of the alphabet letters on the right are paired with same-sounding characters ('D', for example, is next to a character pronounced ‘di’), but other pairs are not so clearly related.

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Muban Educational Trust registration number xuvbv001