The Book About Xu Bing's Book from the Ground - 9780262027427

Although the pictogram-only narrative in Xu Bing's Book from theGround can be read by anyone, there is much more to the story of Xu Bing's wordless bookthan can be gleaned from icons alone. This companion volume to Book from the Groundchronicles the entire project, mapping the history of Xu Bing's novel creation frominspiration to exhibition to publication. In the 1980s, Xu Bing created Book from theSky. Using garbled and nonsensical faux-Chinese characters, this installation expressedXu's doubts about written language and provoked questions about the Chinese language. Thirty yearslater, with Book from the Ground, the artist expresses his hope for a single,universally understood language. Inspired by airport signs that communicate instantaneously throughimages--directing a temporary community of modern nomads where to eat, shop, sit, and find abathroom--Xu began to collect images, icons, and logos from which he could construct a story. Thisbook describes Xu's research, showing notebook pages and bulletin boards full of clipped-out images;offers commentary by the artist and discussions of reading, alphabets and languages; documents, withtext and photographs, exhibitions and installations connected to the work (including a Bookfrom the Ground pop-up concept store); provides a list of works; describes Xu's "iconlab"; and "translates" Xu's pictographic narrative into English.