The Thousand Character Classic is a Chinese poem that has been used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward. It contains exactly one thousand characters, each used only once, and is one of the texts that forms the basis of literacy training in traditional China. Calligraphers often use the text when learning or practicing specific scripts, or styles of writing.

Wang Gongyi has created several works based on The Thousand Character Classic, each increasingly more complex and layered. Her concern is not the script or style itself, but instead approaches the overall poem as a landscape, finding patterns, rhythm and composition in her overlapping characters.

According to Jenn Jung Jiu, her long-time curator, “Gongyi created this piece over the course of many months, slowly layering the characters, and playing with the movement of lightness and darkness. The legend is that this text was created in one night under decree by the emperor, and its author’s hair turned completely white with the effort. Gongyi’s Thousand Character Classic is like an illustration of this legend – to me, it is the poet’s thinking process, manifested in landscape”.