“The Character of Characters” is a hand-painted planar animation work, which is inspired by encountering, viewing, analyzing and imagining Volume 3 of “Mahayana Lotus Sutra” by ZHAO Mengfu. XU Bing, whose works have been consistently utilizing signs, characters and languages as the core of creation, this time takes a step further by employing animation to enable its audience to realize through understanding the evolution course of Chinese characters the binding of Chinese handwriting and the development of the nation’s characteristics, and to understand the core and energy of Chinese Culture, as well as the potential impact that China shall have in the future of establishment of new civilization. This work is thus of vital significance to the world’s cognition on China.
“The Character of Characters” unfolds in the form of hand-drawn two dimensional animation at the keynote of black and white but slightly outlined in red and rendered in the color of old rice paper, and is built up with a 21-meter wide screen, five HD projectors and multiple soundtracks. The wide screen serves as an unfolding a Chinese paint roll, taking the audience into the picture. The whole animation finely employs the Chinese painting composition method of scattering focuses. The modelling of roles and stroke style are blended, interesting and imaginary, but in practical have an internal bind to strokes of Chinese calligraphy. In the animation, each module discusses on the uniqueness of Chinese culture from a specific angle of calligraphy; each part of them could be viewed as an independent work while they are actually together making up a complete creation. Under such strict logic link emerge infinite possibilities, which totally differs from the linear narrative of the past animations. The duration of the work is 16 minutes and 56 seconds, carrying a great load of information, which wouldn’t cause boredom even it’s played in loops. No matter when they enter or exit the picture, Audience are enabled to either walk randomly in the picture as being in the nature, or choose view any section of the work, and such means of viewing is equivalent to the method of “viewing by heart” in appreciating Chinese paintings.
The actions and line-modeling of roles in XU’s creation are unadorned or even seemingly clumsy. However, behind such “clumsiness” unveils an artist’s mastery of measures. The nearly 17-minute long animation is made of more than 10 thousand sketches of unified line-drawing. The power required for outlining should be just proper to get deep into the rice paper but prevent itself from over-penetrating through the paper. Many lines in the drawings were depicted by shrinking the size of the original paintings and re-outlining on a copydesk. Such lines that are first shrunk and then magnified, are endowed with richness of ink-and-wash layers and power of delicateness. The mastery of the uncertainty generated during the encounter between soft brush and rice paper indicates the quality of an artist. In such a grand and complicated work, the artist deliberately maintains the freshness and clumsiness that appeared when his first saw an animation, leaving a broad space for imagination of the audience.
Xu Bing
Xu Bing graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts n 1981. In 1990, he moved to the United States. Xu returned to China in 2007 and has served as professor at CAFA. He currently lives and works in Beijing and New York. His works have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the British Museum (London), Museum of Modern Art (New York), and several Venice Biennales.In 1999, Xu Bing was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2003, Xu Bing was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize, and in 2004, he won the first Wales International Visual Art Prize, Artes Mundi. In 2006, the Southern Graphics Council awarded Xu Bing their Lifetime Achievement Award. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree by Columbia University in 2010. In 2015, Xu Bing received the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts award.