Zhang Xuebo   //   Babel Tower

Comparing different social groups through an anthropological approach – has become a main direction in Zhang Xuebo’s work. “Babel tower” is also known as the “tower leading to the sky”, “Babel” means “turmoil”, from the “Old Testament Genesis:” the Lord heard that humans would build the tower of Babel (Babeta), worried that the humans would do whatever they wanted to do, so God disrupted their languages and scattered them across the land. The tower of Babel mainly includes two layers of progressive metaphor: man and God’s commensuration is apparently spontaneous, and the intrinsic constitute the “world without end, Tianxingjian, a gentleman with unremitting self-improvement” and the pursuit of human nature on the other side of the character;2) man and God’s behaviour are terrible, and about the supernatural the result is doomed to fall apart, as Karl Bart said, “God is the absolute other, there is absolute gap that cant not be crossed over between God and man”. Babel tower is a perfect symbol of rationalism’s development. It is the deviation between mankind and God. A human’s concept and actions are often from the diffusion of dream and passion, and ultimately end with tragedy and pain. countless thoughts and behaviour of the reciprocating movement constitutes a whole existence of humanity’s absurd situation. In the process of China ‘s modernization is a poem of passion and dream. The violent progress of infrastructure made China become a noisy market for the countless real and fake architects. Numerous modernist and postmodernist big buildings erected in the middle of the sky, looking as if to compete with the sky. The picture installation “Babel” is consisted of two special images and landscapes during the modernization of China. Images of One tower are the bottom class people, balconies in the city, windows, low class urban people’s living condition, audition experience and their dreams and struggle, sex, love, like those clothes hanging there, this is a silent scene ,this is the secret side behind the glory of modern Chinese life. The other tower is about the rich class. Luxurious balconies, doors and windows are the symbols of identity and the demonstrable showing off of wealth. These two ” Babel tower” in the materialistic age, quietly condensed under the lens of a flat space and the end of the time, seem to predict all the crisis of our modern life and the future of mankind .