Artist of the Day: Xu Zhen

Mount Everest: the world's highest mountain - or so we are told

Mount Everest is the highest point on planet Earth, or so we are told. Few of us have ever been to its pinnacle, and those who have likely didn't bring a tape measure.

The public takes it by faith that Mount Everest is 29,028 feet high, although a well-publicized variation in measurements leaves some wiggle room for skeptics. How many, when presented with such facts, ever stop to wonder:  "How in the hell do you measure a mountain anyway?"

Radhanath Sikdar a mathematician and surveyor from India, was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852. Employing trigonometry, he calculated Everest's peak to be exactly 29,000 feet.  Now here is where it gets interesting. Fearing that such a perfectly round number would deminish his credibility, Sikdar added two feet to his estimate.

Xu's Expeditionary team, allegedly standing at the top of the World

As if to mock and spoof the inexact metrics of mountains, Xu Zhen, one of China's leading contemporary artists, claims to have scaled the world's highest mountain and sawed off the top 1.86 meters, a measurement equal to his own height. 

Xu then moved his alleged top of the mountain downhill for exhibition, theoretically putting one of the most rarified places on earth within access of the world's masses. The icy display is preserved in a specially made glass refrigerator. 

The tip of Mount Everest on display in a museum. (Or is it?)

Without the other 29,000 feet and some change to act as a pedastal however, the magnificence of this tip-top piece of trivia is greatly diminished. To enhance the gravity of Xu's work of art, he had included a documentary along with the exhibit, which shows his expedition team carving away the top of Mt Everest.

Is the whole concept contrived, or is it authentic? My impression is that Xu revels in the ambiguity and uncertainty, and that such doubt may actually underscore his artistic message - a message which mocks and ridicules the abstract yet defining metrics upon which the public lends so much credence when celebrating the conquest of superlative mountain peaks.