Xu Bing

Abstract

Background Between 1987 and 1991, the young Chinese graphic and fine artist, Xu Bing (born, Beijing, 1955), designed a 'vocabulary' of 4,000 characters which appear, in terms of their graphic form and structure, to be Chinese, but which are entirely illegible in terms of their linguistic signification. None of them appear in Chinese dictionaries, and they do not relate to any other living or dead, spoken or unspoken language on earth. During the same period, Xu personally carved (in reverse) the pear-wood type from which he eventually hand-printed his «Tianshu» or «Book from the Sky».