Frozen in Flight
by Callie Parsons
Ten foot tall crates are stacked, creating a
maze of wooden walls. Each footstep echoes off the high ceiling of the
warehouse-like room, only to emerge from the wooden pathway to find something
truly remarkable. Two colossal, metal birds are hung from the ceiling, patiently
waiting, suspended in the air. Both dangerous and beautiful, the artist Xu Bing
has made scrap metal look all-too intentional. From steel beams to fire
extinguishers to fairy lights, Bing has collected all the materials for these
sculptures from construction sites in his rapidly changing and remarkably
industrialized country of China. Exhibited for the first time outside of China,
Bing’s latest work Phoenix is currently
being displayed at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in North
Adams, Massachusetts. Their football-field-sized, window-lined gallery is the
ideal home for such a monumental sculpture.
These twelve-ton birds look graceful and
almost weightless suspended nearly ten feet above the ground, one in front of
the other. Seeing these phoenixes is at first overwhelming—every broken cog,
rusty tool, and shard of glass is beautiful in its own way. Each individual
part of this sculpture, no matter how industrial or mechanical only helps to
create the elegant nature of the birds. Beneath each is a red and blue banner
which has been molded into waves, as if the phoenixes are truly flying through the
space. Full of colors and textures, Bing has created something that is both
stunningly beautiful and has important meaning behind it. Each scrap of piece
which has been used to create these free and brave phoenixes is used to
represent the struggles and tensions of people who can only find industrial
work in China. Bing is considered one of the most important modern Chinese
artists, and it is evident with the story he is able to tell with these
incredible phoenixes.
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