Sculpture shows essence of the city

The third West Lake International Invitational Sculpture Exhibition will open in Hangzhou on October 1, with 55 artists from home and abroad coming to showcase their works.

The exhibition, "Dialogue with the City", will display numerous outdoor sculptures in Qianjiang, a new town in Hangzhou, the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post reported.

Figuring out how to blend the city's historical, cultural and artistic strengths with urban development has been a major topic in the development of modern cities, Long Xiang, director of the exhibition and a professor from China Academy of Art, told the newspaper.

This is also why we chose to exhibit the sculptures in Qianjiang, a new community that citizens have just started to get to know. It is easy to impress visitors compared with some older parts of the city that people feels so familiar with that they are numb from noticing anything new, the director added.

Many of the sculptures focus on the relations between cities and the natural environment. For instance, the sculptures by Zeng Chenggang, chairman of China Sculpture Institute, and Xu Jiang, president of China Academy of Art, are all based on lotus flowers.

Other items include works by artists from the United States, Japan, and the UK. The exhibition will run for one year.