The southern French city of Montpellier inaugurated an unprecedented exhibition of contemporary Chinese art last Friday, with an official announcement that the region would buy all works on show to form the nucleus of a major Chinese collection in Europe.

The exhibits -- paintings, sculptures, wood-carvings, videos and photographs -- were produced by well known Chinese artists living abroad and by artists on the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, many of them young and traveling outside their country for the first time.

Organizer Jose Freches, a Sinologist and author, visited China a dozen times over two years to seek out artists, whittling down an initial list of 400 to 36.

This is "the first time that Chinese art has been exhibited outside China" on such a scale, declared Montpellier Mayor Helene Mandroux.

Organizers offered three prizes, with the first, carrying a purse of 30,000 euros (US$36,500), going to 42-year-old Liu Jianhua, a professor of art at Shanghai University, for "Dream."

The work is a collection of smashed objects covered in porcelain and laid out on the floor to represent the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated on re-entering the atmosphere in January 2003. A video of the shuttle and its doomed occupants plays in the background.

Liu, who previously exhibited the work in Venice in 2003, told AFP he was happy to see it remain in Montpellier "presuming they will have an appropriate space for such a huge work."

He said the influences on his art were mixed following his travels abroad and exhibitions in China by foreign artists.

The prize, a princely sum in China, "will encourage me to think better, give me more time to think and work," he said.

Second prize, worth 20,000 euros (US$24,300), went to Yang Fudong, 33, also of Shanghai, who covered an entire amphitheatre at a disused pharmacy faculty with 60,000 photographs, and added a couple of dozen video screens, in a work he entitled "Hui-Si" bird.

The third prize, 10,000 euros (US$12,100), went to Chen Qiulin, of the southwestern city of Chengdu, twinned with Montpellier, for "River," a video showing the changes brought by the Three Gorges project.

The setting of the works is an integral part of much of the art, with brightly colored "rockets," for example, standing high in a disused church with slim columns, tall, slim windows and organ-pipes. Other exhibits are outdoors.

"Jardin lavoir," by late artist Chen Zhen, is also in a church. Arranged by his widow, Xu Min, it is a collection of beds filling with water and containing everyday items such as television sets, suitcases, clothes and books.

Georges Freche, the head of the region encompassing Montpellier, announced that it would set up a museum of contemporary art, using the current Chinese exhibits as a nucleus, and asked Freches to buy even more in China.

"I'm buying everything nothing leaves here," he declared.

Freches, an expert on contemporary art, told AFP the new museum should eventually house "a great collection of Chinese art."

He said earlier, "I have the feeling that I have in front of me the Pollocks, Rauschenberg, or Jasper Jones of tomorrow. Chinese artists will certainly be the most sought after in contemporary art in the years to come. I am fascinated by their enthusiasm. They are not at all blase like in our old countries. There is an incredible freshness in their works."

The exhibition runs to October 2, and will be repeated every two years.

(China Daily June 24, 2005)