A Visit to Wu Wei Shan Cultural Figures Sculpture Gallery

On December 4th, 08, the whole class went to the famed university, Nanjing University, for an art exhibition which is called Wu Wei Shan Cultural Figures Sculpture Gallery. All the sculptures are made by a well-known artist, Professor Wu Wei Shan. A mixture: Expressing the ART of sculptures with stone, bronze, or wood by using traditional Chinese idea of art expression, and use contemporary technique for made these pieces of art profound and significant.
Many of the sculptures in exhibition hall gave me deep impressions, but now I want to talk about the most famous one: the sculpture which was christened ‘Laozi’. It was made in 2005, but the sculpture in Nanjing University is a replica.

The first impression to me of this sculpture “Laozi” How huge the sculpture is! Nevertheless, the most astonishing fact is that the “huge” one is not the biggest at all but a slight bronze replica for a sixteen-meter-tall “Titan laozi” in Huai’an, Jiangsu! Then, after a few second applauding in admiration for Professor Wu’s work, I became confused: Did professor Wu think this is a sculpture with deeper, diversified meanings? Maybe the meaning is actually visible, but I still cannot figure out his intention until our guide teacher came and interpreting it to us that this shows a image of Laozi’s thought and his philosophical theory on society issues, attitudes on life, which can be considered as a kind of naturalism.

Whereas, I asked a question to the guide teacher: ‘can you help me with this question: Why this sculpture has a elaborate sculpting on Laozi’s upper half-length portrayal, especially for Laozi’s face, but a very simple, ‘cursivelike’, or even unshaped sculpting for other parts?’Our guide teacher answered with smelling, ‘This is a way of a oriental ideology: not everything must be detailed, but in order to show different further meanings by let audiences get their own understandings. So you can see that’s totally different form Western. Moreover, the simple or even just contour sculpting on subordinate object can also make a good effect by supporting major object.’ Wow…

Well, this seems to be a irony to me (again) after I gave a excellent appreciation to this sculpture “Laozi” because a prefer the Western schools’ method of expressing art in realistic…But anyway, “Laozi” is my favorite in this exhibition because its steady but degage figure, leisurely expressions, the most important one—the sculpture can communicate with visitors by its empty inside which is totally different from other works.

Practically, I think this sculpture virtually reflecting a kind of HARMONY between the spirits of sky, land and also include human beings. It also tell us the importance of a balance between natural principles and human activities—It matches the basic but distinguished thought of inscriptive words (which is from Laozi’s literature Dao De Jing). Moreover, I think that maybe these profound ideas are also match the his outlook on life, and his solicitude to all livings—‘he’ means both two masters on philosophy or sculpting.
After an hour’s visiting, I felt satisfied with the exhibition(but not for the way of sculpting style), for the best art exhibition I have been in this year.