Anhui park celebrates public art

Photo provided to China Daily

The gold-award winner China Dream amplifies the art of the Chinese knot in a creation of red bricks. The Chinese knot is a symbol of blessing in Chinese culture. Artist Li He used red bricks, a traditional material in Chinese building, and cut and assembled them in an extraordinary way to imitate a skyward Chinese knot.

"One of the qualities that we are looking for is the ability to convey traditional Chinese culture in a modern and universally understandable context," says Zeng Chenggang, chairman of the China Sculpture Institute, a co-sponsor of the event. The other sponsors are the China Academy of Art and the Wuhu municipal government.

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove by Yu Chenxing, one of the bronze award winners, features seven bamboo chairs with lengthened legs. Bamboo is an important part of the old lifestyle south of the Yangtze River.

"Despite being an intimate part of people's memory, bamboo chairs are no longer as accessible as they were," Yu says. "Like many elements of the old lifestyle, we yearn for it but are moving in the opposite direction," Yu says.

Karin van Ommeren, a Dutch artist, won a jury award for a bronze sculpture Roots. The work echoes a trunk with tangling roots stretching into the earth, echoing the green surroundings and the theme of ecology.

It is Van Ommeren's third time taking part in a Chinese sculpture exhibition, and she says she foresees more opportunities in China.

"It's getting very hard for artists in the West because of the economic situation. Galleries are closing down," she says. "But in China, people have just started to invest in culture as part of urban development."

However, China has no effective policy to integrate public art like sculpture into the city-planning mechanism, says Wu Yixia, deputy director at the research center for landscape architecture planning at Tsinghua University.

"In Beijing, one street can be managed by five different government departments, making it very difficult to integrate public art into the city," Wu says. She is now leading a research team to create guidelines for Chinese cities to integrate public art into their city planning.