PHOENIX project

source: massmoca

Drawing inspiration from the contemporary realities of his fast-changing country, Chinese artist Xu Bing spent two years creating his newest work, Phoenix. The installation features two monumental birds fabricated entirely from materials harvested from construction sites in urban China, including demolition debris, steel beams, tools, and remnants of the daily lives of migrant laborers. At once fierce and strangely beautiful, the mythic Phoenixes bear witness to the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development, and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today’s China.

This is the premier appearance of the sculpture outside China (the works were exhibited briefly outdoors at the Today Art Museum in Beijing, and then at Expo10 in Shanghai). At MASS MoCA, the internally illuminated 12-ton birds are suspended mid-air inside the museum’s football field-sized Building 5; dwarfing visitors, the male Phoenix Feng measures 90 feet long, while the female Huang reaches 100 feet in length, beak to (steel) tail feathers.

Phoenix is the centerpiece of an exhibition of related art by Xu Bing, widely considered to be among the most important Chinese artists working today. The installation of Phoenix was an intense logistical exercise captured in this time-lapse from JACKADAM. The score is courtesy of Wilco. Phoenix Project was commissioned by Ravenel Art Group and is on loan courtesy of the collection of Mr. Barry Lam. MASS MoCA is grateful for exhibition support provided by the artist’s studio; Sheffield Plastics; Eslite Gallery; Beautiful Asset (Beijing) Industry Co., Ltd.; E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Massachusetts Cultural Council; Robert Lehman Foundation; Helen & Will Little; Rene Balcer & Carolyn Hsu-Balcer; Hugh Freund; Cynthia Hazen Polsky & Leon Polsky; Alex G. Cao & Tina Wong; Jim Schwarz; and an anonymous donor. Additional funding for the exhibition catalogue is provided by the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.
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source: thisiscolossal

Chinese artist Xu Bing has several works currently on view as part of an exhibition at Mass MoCA in Massachusetts. Among the works are two 12-ton birds titled Phoenix that fill the museum’s football field-sized Building 5. Two years in the making, the birds were constructed from materials collected at various Chinese construction sites including demolition debris, steel beams, tools, and assorted remnants of migrant laborers. The male Phoenix titled Feng measures 90 feet long, and the female, Huang, is nearly 100 feet in length from beak to its steel tail feathers. Both birds are illuminated from within through a network of lights.
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source: artistsrespond

Xu Bing was born in 1955 in Chongqing, China; he lives and works in New York and Beijing.

Xu Bing’s artistic practice is an exploration of language. In works ranging from monumental installations to handcrafted books, he plays with the written word, usually in the form of the Chinese character. For Book from the Sky (1987–90), included in the groundbreaking touring exhibition New Chinese Art Inside Out, Xu Bing created more than 200 hand-printed, hand-bound volumes of a single book. The seemingly classical text of the book, exalted in this grand and poetic installation, had been written from an alphabet of some 2,000 Chinese characters that were, in fact, of the artist’s invention. In his work, the artist uses tradition to subvert culture, recasting the cultural meaning and the authority of language. A leader of the cultural avant-garde in Beijing, following his relocation to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, Xu Bing’s education includes an M.A. from Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Art, where he studied traditional bookbinding and calligraphy. In 1990, he moved to New York, where he bases his studio while working on major exhibitions and community-based collaborative works around the world. A 1999 MacArthur Fellow, Xu Bing has exhibited work at major international exhibitions in Venice, Johannesburg, and Sydney, as well as at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Köln; The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Hiroshima City Museum, Japan; and Han Mo Art Center, Beijing, among other museums. In 2001, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution organized a major solo exhibition, Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing. In 2004, Xu Bing was the first winner of the Artes Mundi Prize, an international monetary award honoring one successful artist each year who explores the human condition in his work. In 2008, he was appointed Vice President of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, with responsibilities to guide the school’s international relations and artistic direction.