Spatial-calligraphy, Original-spirit——Press Release of Liu Yonggang Sculpture & Painting Exhibition

　　“Art in America 300 Years Innovation” has just opened in China Art Gallery. Mongolian artist, nationalized Germany, Liu Yonggang has his personal show on Fourteenth February in the Gallery too. 　　He graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1986. Since 1987, he won consecutively in national competitions and became the hot new star in Chinese circles. In nineties, he was abroad for further study. And he won Darna the first prize in Nurnberg Art Academy. From last year, he was back in China preparing for his great dream, a grandeurs plan of stone sculptures under heading of Love-in-arm, to achieve his blueprint. This series of works, titled Love-in-arm, are expressed in Chinese letters and are made of stones. There are 102 pieces of sculptures in size of 340X220X150cm. Because of the large size, they cannot be put in the exhibition room. Hence, only some pieces of them are showed in the Gallery. But they play as the most important roles of his solo show. The name of this exhibition is from them. 　　During his staying in Germany, for more than ten years, he continued easel painting. And his works are as mirrors as to show influential German Expressionism and Neo-expressionism leaving marks. But he eventually found whomever he learned from or whatever he accepted, it is his culture background working as the vital factor, which was the time of awakening from the long period of study and training. He finally turned over towards Chinese Culture. On a contrary occasion, he has the chance to check and interview mother culture with distinctive distance and idiosyncratic consciousness. He feels the fantastic power of Chinese Character. From then on, he studied different types of Chinese characters in different dynasties and he researched the renovation and the composition of letters, and he discovered the unique beauty of Chinese words hiding in distortion and in independent structures. He captured the Beauty and recreated it to make it perfect. This is a kind of succession of Chinese traditions and it is a kind of newborn creation from the origin base.　　It could be said that the most representative symbol in Chinese traditional culture is Chinese Character. Chinese words are the carriers of Chinese Culture. And it is unique, unparalleled and irreplaceable. It is because Chinese Word has its characteristic about of the Nature that the images of words as the mirror images of all existence can show the blessed worth in thinking and can demonstrate the advantages bearing no comparison with words spelled of sounds in letters ABC. Word Image points to the individual characteristic, and its special structure and shape of those pictographs. Words form and spell by letters could not conceive such unique single feature and independent value of shape.　　Therefore, visual artists certainly are specifically sensitive to words. In the past, Chinese artists convey their own ideas of art via Chinese words by different means. In an identifiably distinctive manner, Liu Yonggang gives an uncommon interpretation of Chinese Word from the angle of shape. For thousands of years, Chinese vary versions during the proceeding of using and writing. Liu Yonggang probes into Chinese Word from the starting point of Chinese handwriting. But he does not hold motionlessly as the planar graph and the calligraphy are not the ending line for his artistic creation. He dedicates most of his time to find the deep semantic complement of shapes and images of Chinese character, and then he discovers form elements and vision power of those figures of words when they are employed in art world. After that, he manages to change the structures of those isolated words to use them in new space and to let them possess three dimension rooms. Then they can transmit spatial declination of their own tendency and show their own smarts. He provides us a new approach and an adventure toward the new era of our minds for farther exploration in the world of Chinese words.　　Let words occupy space. It is a great pioneering or explosive undertaking in the history of Chinese Character. Anyway, his sculptures have actual worth ahead of the boundary of literature or graphology. Because his effort is to reduce signal purpose to perceptible and shapeable state, not to indicator, it cannot be recognized or read, but it is visible and perceivable. It is his goal to employ the structure and the image of words to express new visual images not to write down new type of words with phiology meaning. 　　All his spatial words lead us to shapeable imagination. The theme, Love-in-arm, is imaginative expression of people living with and loving each other, and people going ahead shoulder by shoulder. It depends on those word images standing with postures and shapes, attitudes and appearances, differing from each other, to express the real meaning of words. It is what the artist wants to speak out about the eternal love: it is love, embracing the world; it is love, holding in people; it is love, holding the society; it is love, hugging everyday; it is love, accepting each other; it is love, owning all.(by Liu Yonggang)　　It is clear the grand sculptures Love-in-arm is a unit of calligraphy, painting and sculpture. The inspiration emerges out of inscriptions on oracle bones, Mongolian, ancient Mongolian, which are the symbols of mystery Chinese Culture. People love their families, relatives, careers, as well as arts, countries and communities. It is Love of humankind. Love of each other, peace of families, and harmony of the society, are the fountains of lives under the Sky. Because of these human emotions, we can conquer the struggles and the troubles when we create miracles and cultures in the tough journey. The sculptures are the products out of man’s mind, creative idea, passion, spirit and pray. And they are the good examples of our national soul for general wishes of peace, harmony, development, and magnanimous perfect. 　　What must be mentioned is that there was a day when his hundreds pieces of small sculptures lined into a form in his studio in Berlin, and when the artist planned to make one hundred and two pieces of sculpture (each of them has the same size of 340X220X150 cm), for that is a real large scale and a magnitude group of works, to fulfill his art dream. Fortunately, a president of an enterprise, who loves art, is moved and impressed. The enthusiastic benefactor personally decided to fund and to help him to achieve his aspiration with unconditional devotion. So it is the story of the earth-shaking accomplishment taking place in a stonecutting factory in Zhengmao of Xinle City of Hebei Province. Today we can appreciate a part of these sculptures. When the whole unit of sculptures is completed, they will be located in the new city of Ordos. By that time the sculptures sure are terrific and the site of transportation and arrangement will be prodigious. Up till then, Love-in-arm will be a great gift for the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region from the Mongolian artist.