Installation with artifacts, neon arrow signs, display pedestal
Part of the exhibition Container Culture
Curated by Zhang Ga

Zhong Chen (Prophecy) is one component of the site specific Tobacco Project. This part of the installation consists of a display pedestal encased with original accounting paperwork, bank records, receipts and other historical artifacts that document the business transactions of the British American Tobacco Company in China it its formative days, the display also contains the artist's personal financial transaction record with the Duke Foundation during the creation of the Tobacco Project in 2000. The project traces the trajectory of the multinational tobacco company's expansion into the world's most populous country and urges us to reflect on China's modern and contemporary experience as a marketplace as well as her interaction with global economy, implicitly invoking its multiple interpretations. Xu Bing's Zhong Chen realizes its experimental quality by engaging art in a new kind of dialogue with commercial culture and international relations. The work is neither a representation of observed reality nor an installation of ready-made materials. Rather, it remains in close contact with reality while transforming reality. It would be futile to ask whether it is a "work of art" because Xu Bing did not make it as such, and because its meaning can only be grasped when it is approached as part of a broad, complex social and political process.