On December 23, 2017, hosted by National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), “Voice of Gold and Stone—Invitational Exhibition of Hong Tao’s Sculpture” was grandly unveiled in NAMOC. This exhibition was a part of “NAMOC Academic Invitational Exhibition Series” committed to showcasing the creative achievements made by contemporary Chinese artists at the forefront of the academic field with innovation, exploration and accomplishment. This exhibition strived to ride the new wave.

Mr. Wu Weishan, Director of NAMOC, speaks highly of NAMOC as a holy palace for national art. In the new era, more attention should be paid to discovering and cultivating talents and highlighting the socialist core values through exhibitions. Therefore, this exhibition centering on Hong Tao’s works were included into “NAMOC Academic Invitational Exhibition Series”. Hopefully this exhibition would trigger new academic thoughts for the development of contemporary sculpture art.

Mr. Wu Weishan said in his speech that holding of this exhibition also echoed with the great call of the Nineteenth National Congress of the CPC in order to radiate cultural self-confidence in creation, dissemination and teaching. NAMOC should not only organizes good exhibitions, but also should discover talents through exhibitions, select talents, carry forward the spirit, and play the leading role of national-class art museum in the cultural construction of the times. He expressed heartfelt wish that this exhibition would meet with great success. Professor Hong Tao was expected to start with this exhibition in his future art journey, dance with gold color, get along with gold color in his life, and give vent to the voice of the times. 

This exhibition mainly presented some sculptures created by sculptor Hong Tao since 2008. These sculptures were products from his re-comprehension and portrayal of the life forms of historical figures and historical events. For the artist, sculpture creation should not only focus on approaches to presenting the observed objects ideally, but also should explore for emotional relations between the observed objects and the phenomenal world.

As commented by Mr. Wu Weishan, Hong Tao’s sculptures uphold a style. This style is clear at a glance and distinguishes from other sculptures. More importantly, this style is spontaneously generated from the artist’s mind and hand. It is not popular or jerky. Subtle style in freehand appearance straightly underscores the essence of things and the heart of the characters. This is the correspondence found by the artist in the visual expression and styling impression on the basis of profound and keen observation of objective objects and deep understanding and comprehension of the spiritual world. It bears witness to wisdom creation under perfect combination of mind and hand. Especially in the revolutionary thematic creation, it is important to ponder over how to cast ideal, faith and will in a unique form. Such profound inquiry and exploration of the relationship between the subject and the form leads to his expressive tension from the Russian heroic and magnificent sculpture. He also finds the way of expression from the unconstrained creation in the form, and gains spiritual strength from the great practice of the Chinese revolution.

Academic Chair Li Xiangqun (President of Luxun Academy of Fine Arts) and curator Dr. Zhang Lei rooted for this exhibition. Hong Tao's ever-increasingly maturing and well-established personal style was vividly demonstrated through sculptures, images, sketches and precious photos.