The Fourth China Sculpture Exhibition is running at Shandong Art Museum through Nov 13. Works by up-and-coming artists are one of the highlights of the show. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"Chinese pose" is also the theme for the Fourth China Sculpture Exhibition, which has been organized by Zeng's institute and runs at Shan-dong Art Museum, in Jinan of East China's Shandong province, through Nov 13.

Some 100 works on show reveal the trends in style and technique over the past two years, and 60 percent of the featured artists are aged 36 or below.

The exhibition opened on Oct 18.

The displayed sculptures have been selected by a jury comprising artists and scholars from more than 1,500 applicants across the country. Liu's work is among the top five pieces that won the most votes from judges.

The exhibition was launched in 2008 to discover up-and-coming artists who make multiple attempts at creation and in different ways. Liu's works were displayed at the same exhibition in 2011 and 2013.

"I feel the show's appraisal process has raised the threshold, but I also see young artists making successful entries here, which is encouraging for us," Liu says.

Zeng says the exhibition is providing a stage to young artists whose viewpoints are reshaping Chinese sculpture. Such artists are sensitive to social transformation and they translate their thoughts into the language of sculpture, he says, which is an outcome of economic and educational developments as well as the examination of Chinese culture by them.

In his shown work, 2016.2.29, Dawn, Sunny, Guangzhou-based artist Ke Jiamin, 32, hails the individuality of handicraft that was once replaced by factories but has won back people recently.