拍品描述：
款识：签名、标题、日期、31/50
钤印：艺术家
尚有数版艺术家试作版，由艺术家出版，全为已裱。
While pursuing his master’s degree in printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Xu Bing became increasingly interested in the element of repetition that characterizes the print medium. This curiosity culminated in Five Series of Repetitions, which was presented as part of his 1987 master’s thesis project and marked the artist’s decisive turn towards conceptualism, foretelling Xu’s continued exploration of visual culture and materiality in printmaking and large-scale installations.
Five Series of Repetitions functions as an experiment in the artistic qualities that make prints unique despite their repetitive forms. For the project, Bing made an impression at each state of the printmaking process to show the evolution of carved woodblocks over time. This began with the artist making an impression from an uncarved woodblock that resulted in a solid black print, then proceeding to carve the block and print these states, evolving towards the present depictions of fields, mountains, and ponds. Once these scenes had been established on the block, Bing then continued through this typical final state by slowly chipping away at the representational forms and making impressions at various stages until a blank white “print”, representing the block after the raised surface had been completely carved away, was all that remained.
Originally mounted successively in a strip, the complete scope of the project illustrated the progression from nothing to something to nothing again, in accordance with the Buddhist cycle of life, death, and rebirth. This oscillation between nothingness and somethingness additionally anticipates the artist’s desire, expressed later in his career, to “make something useless”—to push the medium of woodcutting, the usefulness of figuration. The present prints thus reflect a figurative midway point in this early series, in which the aerial scenes of the idyllic natural world are fully carved, their forms not yet carved away towards oblivion.
图录文章:
Including: Black Tadpoles; Haystack Reflection; Moving Cloud; Life Pond; A Big River; A Place With Mountains; Black Pond; Field; Cropland; and Dry Pond.
全套十件木刻版画 日本纸本（全包边）
condition:
Dry Pond examined out of the frame. The others examined within the frames.
The sheets toned, all with scattered paper inclusions (inherent with the paper type and materials used)
Dry Pond with a crescent shaped handing crease at the left center sheet edge, two minute diagonal creases at the lower right and lower left corners, a minute area of surface soiling at the upper right margin.
Black Tadpoles with a minute diagonal crease at the lower left corner.
Haystack Reflection with stray ink at the left center margin, a minute soft diagonal crease at the lower left corner.
Moving Cloud with a minute area of skinning at the upper right margin (likely inherent with the paper type).
Life Pond with a minute diagonal crease at the left center sheet edge.
A Big River with very occasional pale pinpoint foxmarks and/or paper inclusions in the margins, a minute vertical crease at the upper right sheet edge, irregular staining at the left center margin.
Field with a crescent shaped handling crease at the upper left sheet edge, a minute area of skinning at the upper right margin (barely of note, likely inherent with the paper type).
Cropland with a minute area of stray ink in the margin.
In our opinion, these works are in generally very good condition.
F: all within black metal frames, floated, under Plexiglas.
All condition assessments exclude a work’s frame.
创作年代:
1987-1988年作