By Celine Chen

The Chengdu Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition opened on September 23. Following the Sixth Shenzhen Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture, all the exhibits moved to Chengdu OCT Gallery in the Overseas Chinese Town of Chengdu City.

Artworks from a total of 22 famous domestic and overseas artists, including Ai Weiwei, Bai Xuanlou and Caohui, are on display in the gallery. The theme of the exhibition focuses on contradictions between aspirations and concerns over China's modernization, and conflicts between the spiritual and the ecological worlds.

Outside the exhibition, an 80-meter-long whale-shaped balloon floats above the gallery. The balloon weighs more than 100 kilograms. The artwork, called "Weightlessness", was created by artist Cheng Dapeng, an architect and designer from Beijing. He says, "Beijing City changes every day. My work expresses the huge impact on citizens during rebuilding. A whale is the biggest creature in the world, so I chose it as my subject." As new architecture is being established, he says, traditional things are dying off. But he denies the work expresses criticism of construction in the city – "It's as inevitable as teenage spots..."

One work attracted a lot of attention on the first day -- "Golden Skull" by Feng Feng of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art -- and the artist was surrounded by reporters. The bones of a complete human skeleton were dispersed in a huge show case, and each bone was covered with pure gold leaf. Feng said the art work, which cost him many thousands of yuan, is aimed at satirizing modern-day money worship.

Another eye-catching work is "Chinese skyscrapers" from Greek artist Thanos Zakopoulossphyris. Nearly 100 mouse cages are piled together to make a high building. He said he got his idea of his work from the film Blade Runner. "The imitation and copying that goes on among Chinese cities also made a big impression on me."

Xu Bing's work "The Story on the Back" is a copy of the famous landscape painting by Huang Gongwang, a painter of the Yuan Dynasty, seen through a polished glass. But the "painting" is in fact a montage of flax, palm leaves and tiny branches on the rear of the polished glass. Xu said that he visited a gallery in Berlin four years ago and found many Chinese paintings looted by foreigners during World War II, including the famous painting by Huang Gongwang. He simply wanted to restore it by other means.

(China.org.cn September 25, 2008)