Detail: Over the coming year, the campus of Colgate University will host a series of events that present twentieth century Chinese art in both historical and contemporary contexts. These activities include exhibitions, lectures by visiting artists, performance and curricular programming which will explore contemporary Chinese woodblock print art, installation art, and film. They will offer viewers an opportunity to familiarize themselves with China's burgeoning contemporary art scene and the traditions from which it has arisen.
In this solo exhibition at the Clifford Gallery curated by Carolyn Guile, assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History, Chinese artist Xu Bing (b. 1955, Chongqing, Sichuan province, China), winner of a MacArthur "genius grant" (1999), presents fifteen works drawn from the last twenty years that explore the interpretability of text and image, including a portion of A Book from the Sky (1987). Emerging from his position as witness to the Cultural Revolution in China, Xu Bing has created works that engage the public and private act of reading. The exhibition continues A Year of Chinese Art at Colgate sponsored by the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts and made possible in part by the generous support of Robert H.N. Ho '56.