Landscript: Revisit

This small, monochrome ink landscape seems oddly constructed out of repeating elements that are grouped together. In fact, these elements are ancient forms of Chinese characters, some dating to the 3rd century BCE. The artist Xú Bīng has cleverly made use of the fact that these early characters were often pictographs, or written characters based on pictures of what they represent, so the rocks and trees in the landscape are made with the characters for rocks and trees.

. Xú Bīng is a wildly creative and innovative experimental artist, a leading figure in global art since the 1980s. Much of his work playfully questions meaning and representation, the role of tradition in contemporary art, and how humans relate to the natural world. With this work, Xú may be suggesting that humans often view the landscape through a filter of culture and language, overlooking some fundamental aspect of an experience of the natural world.

. The title, Revisit, suggests returning to a familiar place or practice. Xú has said, "Other people all say I am a practitioner of contemporary art; in fact, what I have polished and refined are mostly obsolete things. These "obsoletes" contain within them the most fundamental things, core things. These old sayings that we have gone over again and again always have significance, always serve a purpose, just as if they are brand new things."