Chinese sculpture
By admin on 2014-12-26

Talk about Chinese sculpture usually conjures up serious images such as terracotta and Buddhist-like fi gures, with the start of a new year, an exciting exhibition is seeing young Chinese sculptors take the genre to another level, creating innovate art in their own unique way and injecting fresh vitality into the old art form that has thousands of years of history.

At the exhibition New Language Sculptures, underway at the New Age Gallery in the 798 Artistic District, sculptures with avant-garde and contemporary concepts and utilizing a range of di. erent materials are bringing art-lovers a new era of Chinese sculpture.

"Different from traditional Chinese sculptures that often look serious, all works here are quite amusing, but with deep refl ections on social reality," commented Xia Yun, curator of the exhibition.

Created by emerging young artists including Xia Hang, Zheng Lu and Xiu Zhipeng, all born after the 1970s, the exhibition is being considered by art critics as one presenting new hope for the Chinese sculpture world.

At the center of the exhibition hall is Xia Hang's Taking O_ , a UFO-like machine made of stainless steel. With several wheels and a propeller on top, it is hard to decipher exactly what the work represents at first.

"I myself also don't know what it is, maybe a bicycle, a helicopter, or even a sleigh," explained the artist. "I think it's just a toy existing in my mind, but not the real world."

While a toy on the surface, Xia's sculpture is also a transformer: the audience can take it apart and reorganize it at will, each time making it a different UFO.

"I'm trying to refl ect that there are immense possibilities in today's society, so, each one of us could be another if we liked," Xia added, saying that technology enlightened his artistic creation.

"Of course it also involves knowledge of mechanics," Xia explained. "How to organize each component of the 'toy' is quite complicated."
Zeng Chenggang, director of China Sculpture Association and vice-chairman of Chinese Artists Association, spoke highly of this kind of innovation in China's sculpture world.

"I think it is a good trend that sculptors are turning to make deep refl ections of the world and not only portraying what exists in our lives," Zeng said. "Sculpture also needs to be refreshed in the new era."

Zeng added that using di. erent materials is an important aspect of innovation, compared with the use of traditional materials of bronze and clay.
"Different materials can add new dimension to sculptures and it is also a change in today's sculpture scene," he said.

Xiu Zhipeng's Warm Hut has drawn large crowds since the show opened Sunday. The use of new materials features highly in the artist's interpretation of his idea.

Despite its title, Xiu's piece is not an image of a hut, but a roughly folded thin cotton quilt made out of marble.

In stark contrast to itsname, the piece of cotton quilt sends a message of coldness and rigidity, evoking thoughts of a migrant worker's living conditions.

The quality of the marble sends a chillingly cold sensory experience, Xiu explained. "It's white, like many cotton quilts we use, however, it's not soft and warm as it should be because it's marble."

"A thin cotton quilt couldn't bring warmth for migrant workers and the work sheds they live in are also not warm," he added, saying that through the obvious visual contrasts he is trying to draw attention to the plight of migrant workers in winter.

Xiu explained that he tried many materials to evoke the feeling of cold when working on the piece, with marble being the best.

"Stainless steel was the fi rst media I thought about, but its color didn't make it look like a cotton quilt, so I gave up," he said.

"A cotton quilt is supposed to bring warmth, with the use of marble playing the crucial role in illustrating the artistic idea," commented curator Xia Yun, saying that the sculpture was created based on the artist's close attention to social reality, which is an encouraging new trend in Chinese sculpture.

"What has the fast-developing economy brought us in the past decades?" Xiu asked. "While praising its positive impacts we should never forget the large group of people who made great contributions but still live in bad conditions."

New Language Sculptures is scheduled to be held until the end of February.