Sculpt the time
The year 1958 saw the unveiling of the Monument to People's Heroes in Beijing. The project took nearly six years to complete. The carving of the reliefs, the bottom of which depicted critical moments in the progress of the Chinese revolution over a century, was the work of prominent sculptors, several of whom also taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and helped usher in modern Chinese sculpture.
The links between the teaching of sculpture at the central academy and Chinese art in the 20th century is currently being given a review at its campus.
In the CAFA Art Museum and outside at locations around the campus, pieces by sculptors, who have taught at the school and who have been pioneers in the art world, are on display.
The exhibition, The Great Series of Sculpture, runs until Nov 24. At its opening, a number of figures who contributed to Chinese sculpture were given awards.
9:30 am-5:30 pm, closed on Mondays. 8 Huajiadi Nanjie, Wangjing, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-6477-1575.
Crafting nature
Artists from Fuzhou, East China's Fujian province, are showing works of imagination and creativity at the Chinese Traditional Culture Museum in Beijing until Nov 24.
Surrounded by ranges of mountains in three directions, as well as the Minjiang River, Fuzhou has built up a rich tradition of art and culture. For generations, artists there committed themselves to the kind of superb craftsmanship evident in a variety of handicrafts.
The exhibition highlights four disciplines — lacquer making, Shoushan stone carving, cork carving, and wood carving, and shows how people use these materials sourced from nature to decorate their living spaces and lives.
9 am-5 pm (last entry 4 pm), closed on Mondays. 16 Hujing Donglu, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-8799-1800; 010-8799-1866.
New calligraphy
Wang Dongling, an artist and professor of calligraphy at Hangzhou's China Academy of Art, in Zhejiang province, is known for paying contemporary homage to the traditional practice.
For decades, the vanguard artist has explored new frontiers of calligraphy and the ways it is presented.
Not only does Wang demonstrate technical expertise, he also surprises his audience by turning writing into a performance of strength, and integrates the presentation of his works with other forms of art.
Pilgrim to Tianjin, Wang's exhibition at the Tianjin Art Museum introduces the purity and expressiveness of the line under his experimental strokes, adding dimensions to calligraphy, and his installations magnify the scale of writing as an art form.
Wang says that the exhibition is his salute to people in Tianjin. He also pays tribute to eminent culture figures once living in Tianjin, who helped revive artistic traditions in modern times. The exhibition runs until Jan 5.
9 am-4:30 pm, closed on Mondays. 60 Pingjiang Dao, Hexi district, Tianjin. 022-8388-3300.
