Zhu Bingren, a master of Chinese arts and crafts and the inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage bronze carving skills, made the latest copper melting artworks with original copper melting art, as well as seals, calligraphy and paintings, cultural and creative derivatives and works focusing on hot issues of mankind, came to Singapore for the first time and were exhibited at the China Cultural Centre in Singapore at 3pm on October 14, 2017. This is another move by the art of molten copper to enter the international cultural exchange after participating in the Venice Diptych Exhibition.

Zhu Bingren also worked with Singaporean artists and farmers to plant this magnificent piece of golden rice.

▲朱炳仁与新加坡各大商会，当地官方，艺术界人士会面合影

朱炳仁的新加坡个展得到了中国文化部等相关部门的大力支持，中国艺术研究院名誉院长王文章为此次个展专门做序，表示朱炳仁是一位执着坚守、勇于开拓、锐意创新的艺术家，他的作品“让人思考的比给人看的东西要多”，相信在中新两国友好、文化交流加强的今天，朱炳仁熔古铸新的铜雕艺术，会架起一座艺术的桥梁，让观众在感受艺术之美的过程中，沟通情感，增进友谊。

▲Zhu Bingren’s “Song Painting Labyrinth” participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale

And Zhu Bingren’s fate with Singapore dates back to November 2015. Mr Chu attended the inauguration ceremony of the China Cultural Centre in Singapore, co-chaired by the leaders of China and Singapore, in the Lion City.

In the central lobby, which represents the cultural exchange between the two countries, it is Zhu Bingren’s huge molten copper mural “Spring and Qingyan” that is displayed. Standing 4.5 meters high and 8 meters wide, this painting is a piece of spring plum blossoms cast on a marble slab in the traditional Chinese ink painting style.

The artistic technique of splashing copper like ink, coupled with regional oxidation and coloring, expresses the style of “plum” vividly. This method of creation is unprecedented, and it is the first time in the history of Japan and abroad.

▲ Works Haru and Kiyoyan

It is reported that the “Melting the Ancient and Casting the New” Zhu Bingren Art Solo Exhibition will be the first art exhibition on copper history, culture and cultural creativity in Singapore’s history, and it is also an important cultural exchange activity under the “Belt and Road” strategy.

▲ Works Qin figurines

▲ Works Song painting left gold

For a long time, “spreading copper culture and returning copper to the lives of ordinary people” has always been Zhu Bingren’s belief. Since ancient times, copper has been an indispensable thing for human life, and the tripod of the Bronze Age is a symbol of people’s status at that time. Copper has disappeared from our lives for decades and is rarely used in today’s daily life. Regarding this phenomenon, Zhu Bingren and his son Zhu Junmin began to think about the return of copper. Through the innovation of copper art cultural and creative derivatives to attract the attention and love of young people, but also through the cooperation with the China Palace Museum, Chengdu Museum, Summer Palace to create cultural and creative products, exquisite and atmospheric style, so that his works are often presented as national gifts to VIPs.

▲ Works Forbidden City Cultural and Creative Derivation

Nearly 300 guests from all walks of life in Singapore, including Que Xiaohua, Cultural Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Singapore, Zeng Shisheng, former Member of Parliament of Singapore, Hu Jinsheng, President of the Singapore China Chamber of Commerce, and Ma Hongying, Director of the Singapore China Cultural Center, will also be held in the afternoon of the opening ceremonyParticipated in the opening of the solo exhibition. In addition to guests from Singapore, representatives from Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places made a special trip to Singapore to visit the exhibition. Major media in China and Singapore, including Xinhua News Agency, China News Service, China Radio International, CCTV, Lianhe Zaobao, Mediacorp Channel 8, etc., will carry out in-depth reports.

While inheriting traditional skills, Zhu Bingren also excavated and innovated bronze carving skills. The purple gold bronze mural he created, ending the history of no copper mural in ancient and modern Chinese and foreign copper carving art, Hangzhou New Leifeng Pagoda after repeated trials, also put on a colorful copper coat, becoming China’s first colored bronze tower. He has won more than 60 national patents and the “Hundred Flowers Award” of Chinese Arts and Crafts, and many other honors such as the Chinese Cultural Relics of the Year. In the past 20 years, he has created more than 100 copper buildings in China, such as the Golden Dome of Mount Emei, the Copper Pagoda of Guilin, the Tianning Pagoda of Changzhou, and the copper decoration of the main venue of the G20 Hangzhou Summit and the BRICS Xiamen Summit.

▲ Zodiac bronze beast head

▲G20杭州峰会主会场

▲The main venue of the BRICS Xiamen Summit

In 2006, Zhu Bingren accidentally discovered the natural beauty of copper in high-temperature melting in a fire, and pioneered the “art of copper melting”, opening a new field of “moldless and controllable” copper melting art. This is a new creative technique by melting and chemically oxidizing the molten copper at a high temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius. This is different from the traditional sense of casting, inlay and other processes. In creation, he uses copper as ink to make the molten copper flow freely, and this process is free from the shackles of the mold. He said, “Since the Bronze Age, copper casting has required molds, and this ‘moldless controllable casting process’ has completely liberated copper from molds and given copper freedom.” As soon as his molten copper art works came out, they attracted great attention from the art circles at home and abroad, and were collected by many art institutions and collectors.

▲ works Golden Lotus color rhyme series

▲ works landscape copper seal

▲ Works colorful Gengcai

▲ works Yunxia copper bottle series

▲ Works Mu Yun Shengjin series

▲ works Yunguang mountain series

▲ Works Sunflower Sunrise series

▲ Work A thousand waves of snow

In the upcoming collaboration with Singaporean artists, the copper installation art “Rice Kedao, Extraordinary Rice” is also created by molten copper art. The bronze carved rice ears of different shapes caused a sensation at the 2012 Shanghai Art Exhibition because of their gains and losses and reverence for nature, and later the exhibition in the library of Peking University aroused the attention and thinking of students in Guangzhou. Zhu Bingren pointed out that rice seems to be the most ordinary and simple, and few works of art express it, especially the broken structure of rice ears is difficult to sculpt, but through this work, he hopes to convey the common concern of Chinese and Singaporean artists about poverty and people’s livelihood issues around the world.

▲ Work “Hanxi” (in the collection of the Chinese Cultural Center in Bangkok)

Zhu Bingren has been actively involved in cultural exchanges between China and the world, and after several years of efforts, more and more countries have learned about Zhu Bingren’s copper art, and more and more people have learned about China’s contemporary culture. “The past is used for the present, and the new ideas are created by ourselves”, Zhu Bingren has inherited the bronze carving skills for a hundred years and constantly seeks new breakthroughs. Supplemented by abstract contemporary language, the works find the convergence of tradition and modernity, just as Singapore’s traditional and contemporary, Chinese and Western multicultural charm coexist, which is inclusive and integrated.