Xu Bing: Landscape Landscript

The Ashmolean Museum kicks off its 2013 exhibition programme with its first major contemporary art show.

“Landscape Landscript” concentrates on the Chinese artist Xu Bing’s landscape paintings, which are modern twists on traditional Chinese art.

“We have one of the most important collections of 20th-century Chinese painting in the West,” says Shelagh Vainker, the curator of the exhibition, “but we’re also a museum that has a very long history, and Xu Bing’s work engages strongly with traditional art in China.” Xu turns words into pictures.

The rocks, mountains and trees represented in his “Landscript” series, are traditional in appearance, but constructed from the Chinese characters for those elements.

For example, the repeated Chinese character for mountain indicates rocks and cliffs in the work while the pictogram for tree, forms the trunk and branches that reach across the surface.

Although steeped in tradition, the works also have a strong “contemporaneity”, says Vainker. The exhibition also highlights the impact of 19th-century French painting on Xu’s work through a series of sketches by artists including Jean-FrançoisMillet, Camille Pissarro and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot chosen by the artist from the Ashmolean’s collection.

“The art education that Xu received was adopted from a Soviet model that itself was based on French academic practice,” Vainker says.

“So there’s quite a strong French presence in drawings from China at that time, and that’s reflected in Bing’s early work.” For Vainker, the impact of French art in China sheds light on the latter’s history.

“It shows that China wasn’t totally isolated at that time and that cultures really aren’t unconnected,” she says.

Chinese links The Ashmolean has a long history of involvement in Chinese art, with a collection that stretches from Neolithic ceramics to contemporary painting.

It also works regularly with Chinese institutions. “Although there’s no formal ongoing programme, there is quite a lot of activity,” Vainker says.

Last year, the museum organised “Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sullivan Collection” (24 July 2012-27 January), which is due to travel to the National Art Museum of China this autumn.

One of the finest groups of Modern and Chinese art in the West, the show will introduce the Sullivan Collection to the Chinese public for the first time.

Vainker has also just returned from a fellowship attached to the Capital Museum in Beijing. • Xu Bing: Landscape Landscript, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 28 February-19 May Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)