To usher in the Year of the Horse, Chinese artists present traditional Chinese folk art through contemporary installations at an open-space shopping area. Wu Ni reports.

To celebrate the upcoming year of the Horse, a series of horse-themed artworks created by eight Chinese contemporary artists are exhibited at the Life Hub@Jinqiao, an open-space shopping area with abundant boutiques and restaurants.

Both established artists and promising young talents contributed their works to showcase traditional Chinese folk art through contemporary installations.

At the entrance stands a giant wooden horse. Tang Hui, a Beijing-based artist, made the sculpture with different layers of wood.

The horse takes the shape of the famous Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) masterpiece - the bronze statue Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow. The original artwork is now preserved in Gansu Museum.

Along with the giant wooden horse are four small horse sculptures, which are made of glass beads rubbed with special techniques, created by glass artist Xue Lyu. With different colors of LED lights installed inside, the horse sculptures shine brightly at night.

Wang Xieda, a Shanghai sculptor, used rattan to weave an abstract image of a horse, under the inspiration of the Chinese character for "horse". It provokes viewers to ponder Chinese folk art and traditional culture.

But the most outstanding art piece is a giant paper-cut at the center of the mall called Heavenly Horses.

Wang Lihua, a renowned Chinese-born artist now living in the United States, studied various gestures and movements of horses in paintings and movies. The artist formed her own vision of horses and presented them with countless images of horses in her paper-cut.

"Visitors will be attracted by the complicated lines at first glance," Wang says. "When they walk closer and look at it carefully, they can detect many different horses."

The paper-cut was not pasted on the wall. Instead, it was thick and set about 5 centimeters away from the wall, making it look like a 3-D work.

Another installation, called Eight Horses, is full of childish fun. The creator, Wu Jie, a young designer from Shanghai, made the horses like a merry-go-round. And each horse takes the form of a rocking horse, a popular toy for children.

The horses are decorated with beautiful patterns embroidered by women from the Qiang ethnic group in Sichuan province whose main settlements were devastated by the magnitude-8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008.

Contact the writer at wuni@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 01/26/2014 page9)