Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum

Hualien Beautiful Stone Touring Exhibition ． Stone Sculpture Museum Exhibition

Long Lived the Stone- Hualien Beautiful Stone Touring Exhibition

Ten years after the previous exhibition, "Long Lived the Stone - Hualien Beautiful Stone Touring Exhibition" is back again in northern and southern Taiwan with beautiful stones from Hualien. This exhibition is an unprecedented one with the themes of "Buddha" and "Stone".

This exhibition is titled "Long Lived the Stone" to indicate the time length stones have existed in Hualien. Hualien is located at the junction of the continental Eurasian plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. These two plates constantly squeeze on each other, causing frequent earthquakes in Hualien, and forming perpetual gems. Any piece of jade, whether it comes from a mountain, a stream or the sea, is derived from the birth of the earth 4.6 billion years ago, with a life span of more than hundreds of thousands of years or tens of millions of years. It has even survived the meteorites from the vast universe. Every stone comes from an unimaginable long time of formation.

This exhibition connects the past with the future through the display of jade and stone sculptures; and reflects the values of life with the natural stone patterns.

Rockin' the Art of Stone Sculpture- Hualien Stone Sculpture Museum Exhibition

The Chinese people who came to Hualien in the early nineteenth century settled at the mouth of Hualien Creek. They saw the rushing Hualien Creek pouring into the Pacific Ocean, forming a huge wave, so they called this place "Huilan" and later named it after a homophonic sound "Hualien". Known as the "Hometown of Stones", Hualien is located in the eastern Taiwan. It has magnificent landscapes of mountain and sea, warm weather, abundant agricultural and fishery products, and natural mineral veins. It is especially famous for producing world-class marble and jade. The blessed natural conditions have nutured its unique regional culture and stone carving art.

This exhibition brings the rich collections of the Hualien Stone Sculpture Museum, the only museum with stone sculpture theme in Taiwan, to the international stage through Inter-Museum exchanges. A tension caused by the confrontation between "mountain" and "sea" is expressed through the artists' philosophical thinking of "emptiness". The exhibition presents an endless cycle of "fluctuations" between people and species, people and the natural environment over generations. The stone sculptors' enthusiasm for their works, their precise mastery of the media, and the exquisite carving, symbolize the craftsmanship of this exhibition.