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Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park, founded by Taiwanese entrepreneur Mr. Rhy-Chang Tsao in 1996, is a large-scale international park of land art projects mainly engaged in cavern art and contemporary sculpture. It is located in the unique and unspoiled natural surroundings of Guilin. With the joined efforts of global eminent artists, it is to be built as a living museum and leave a fine cultural heritage for future generations. It is a world heritage in progress shared and possessed by the world.
To reach this ultimate goal, the construction of the park is to protect nature and create new culture by displaying contemporary art in various languages and styles. With the perfect combination of sheer natural beauty and peerless art glamour, Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park is to be a fairyland for all the people to experience the eternal power of art and culture.
The overall construction of Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park is predicted to be 30 years and divided into 2 phases. The first phase is programmed as a 10-year project based on the existed geographical features. It takes the International Sculpture Park as the main body, surrounded by living & working area, art village, art salon, teaching & demonstrating are, open air theater and spiritual center. The first phase started in 1999 and the living & working area will be completed and open at the beginning of 2003. It covers a land area over 1 acre with construction items including Smile Plaza, Founder Memorial, Art Canteen, Holiday Center, Creation Center, Administration Building, Sundance Lakes, Cafe Forest, Water of Fantasy, Land Art Labyrinth, Lake of Regrets, World Flower Corridor and etc..
The second phase will focus on the cavern art project, which is the most distinguishing feature in Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park. Guilin is famous for its picturesque scenery of clean water, beautiful mountains and caverns and rocks. Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park wishes to endow the unique natural landscape with cultural elements by art creation, so as to establish an immortal cultural and historical heritage for the world. The cavern art project is scheduled as three parts: historical caves, art caves and cavern art museum. The historical caves will be built in the mountains and extending for 1,500 meters. In the caves there will be permanent wall decorations and relives, with the main theme of contemporary cultural and civilization. In the art caves eminent artists of individuality and originality will be invited to perform thematic creation. The cavern art museum takes advantage of natural cave structure instead of traditional artificial architecture structure. Though hidden in the grotesque Guilin mountains, it will be functioning as the most well-equipped modern art museum for art collection and display. This project will present the diversity and general trend of contemporary art and pass down to the later generations by the everlasting caves. This great and arduous project is to be completed in 20 years.
Observed from either the construction process or the objectives, Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park is different from any other tourism development projects. The project of the park itself is a super large-scale art piece, therefore all people involved proceed their work with great caution and responsibility so as to display a perfect production to be shared with the world, no matter in the planning or on-going construction.
While infrastructure is proceeding, various art creation projects are conducted in Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park. So far there have been activities such as International Sculpture Symposium, Thematic Projects and International Sculpture Awards, and some other activities of cultural exchange and art promotion, some of which are sponsored solely, others co-organized with related organizations.
Since 1997, Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park have held 8 International Sculpture Symposia with 114 artists of 25 countries involved and created 114 outdoor monumental sculptures. In the thematic projects Mr. Ju Ming (world-known sculptor from Taiwan), Mr. Shiau Jon-Jen (General Art Director of Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park), Mr. Xiao Li (Beijing), Ms. Li Xiuqin(Hangzhou), Mr. Robert Pierrestiger(France) and Mr. Eberhard Eckerle(Germany) have all created a series of colorful art works in the park. There have been over 200 sculptures and mostly displayed in the living and working area.
In October 2002, Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park launched the first International Sculpture Awards, in which 'Art Collection' Magazine and 'Sculpture' Magazine are the co-organizers. These awards are expected to help the emerging artists, to popularize excellent works of established artists and to promote art and culture exchange on a global scale. By exhibiting the outstanding works we also hope to rich people's cultural life, infuse art and culture elements into the society, and thus fulfill the in-depth significance of cultural construction.
As the only key commonweal project of art and culture in present China, Guilin Yuzi Sculpture Park is to continuously sponsor or co-sponsor various international art promotion activities and competitions, by which to make Guilin more acknowledged as a holy land and the "Olympics" of contemporary art than just an international tourism city, and will lead China trending to the center of global art and culture stage.
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