“One: Xu Bing”

One of China’s most important artists, Xu Bing lived in Brooklyn during the 1990s, and still keeps a studio there. During his sojourn in the Borough Of Kings, Xu, a conceptualist who specializes in large-scale installations, devised a writing system that inscribed English words in a manner recalling Chinese characters. This method, which he calls Square Word Calligraphy, is employed here to pay tribute to Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” in a painting commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum in honor of the poet’s 200th birthday.