Xu Bing: Phoenix

Daniel Traub's documentary short details the unlikely flight of a pair of avian-inspired sculptures by Chinese artist Xu Bing from a Beijing workshop to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Xu took his inspiration from the legend of the phoenix to create two massive sculptures made from materials found at construction sites across Beijing. The works were initially scheduled to go on public display in Beijing, but the expense and tumult connected to the 2008 Olympics and the ensuing global financial crisis resulted in the evaporation of funding needed to complete the project. Fortunately, an alternative venue opened in Taiwan, where Xu's works were exhibited to extraordinary praise. But then the MASS MoCA execs saw the sculptures as a clever way of expressing its own phoenix-worthy rebirth: the museum building was originally a manufacturing facility forced to close as a result of China's muscular expansion into global exporting. Unfortunately, Traub's film is much too short, offering neither much coverage of the planning by Xu and his creative associates required to put together two massive works from a hodgepodge of unlikely materials, nor of the negotiation that brought the sculptures from China to Taiwan and then to Massachusetts. Offering a disappointingly brief look at what appears to be an intriguing story, this is an optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)