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The Fourth China Sculpture Exhibition is running at Shandong Art Museum through Nov 13. Works by up-and-coming artists are one of the highlights of the show. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Young artists flaunt their works around the 'Chinese pose' at ongoing exhibitions in East China, Lin Qi reports.

For nearly a decade, Beijing-based artist Liu Qing has zoomed in on the lives of urban dwellers with his life-size installations.

The 34-year-old sculptor has produced copies of real-life situations, mostly from public spaces such as elevators, subway coaches or waiting halls of train stations.

In such scenes, he creates figures that are at once together and yet indifferent to each other, focusing on their own business－talking on the phone, sleeping or eating.

In his latest work Self-Servicing Ticketing, Liu shows a jammed bus on which migrant workers, office workers, young students and foreigners are tightly pressed together like salmon in a tin can. Their faces tell of a discomfort that would make them shout out at any moment. Some stretch out their hands for support but grab nothing.

Underneath the dramatic feel of his work, Liu presents a calm, insightful observation of people's anxieties because of a breathless pace of life and remote interpersonal relationships thanks mostly to the web addiction in today's world.

Liu's approach reflects a keen interest among many Chinese sculptors in responding to a changing world. The variety of their expressions shows a "Chinese pose" with which artists tell stories of contemporary society, according to Zeng Chenggang, a sculptor and the head of China Sculpture Institute, an academic organization under the Ministry of Culture.