A book from the sky

This work evolved from the regular script in Chinese calligraphy. Xu reassembled Chinese radicals, designing and carving square-block characters that look very similar to traditional Chinese logographs but are entirely meaningless in terms of linguistic function. He patterned all his characters after the classical style used for printing. In addition, he hand-printed the vertical scrolls and presented them in the installation in traditional Chinese stitch-bound format. In A Book from the Sky, the space is overwhelmed by all these unreadable characters. As a result, it merges Chinese and Western art elements and shakes the tradition of Chinese writing at its core.