Model Artist; Sculptor Ju Ming's huge, playful figures capture the everyday and blur the lines between East and West.

Byline: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

Parachutists swoop down inside the immigration halls of Singapore's Changi airport. They look like part of an antiterrorism commando exercise, but they are actually made of bronze and stainless steel and form part of an islandwide exhibition of life-size sculptures by Taiwanese artist Ju Ming. Other figures are playful and engaging; they perform more-mundane acts like standing in line or carrying briefcases to work.

That ability to capture the everyday and make it accessible has helped turn Ju into one of Asia's best-known sculptors. Over the next six months, millions of people will see 72 of his works at the Singapore Art Museum (through Sept. 19) and at indoor public spaces around the city-state (through the end of the year) before the exhibition moves to Beijing and Shanghai in 2005. Ju's semiabstract works, with their emphasis on organic representation, have prompted comparisons to Western sculptors like Rodin and Henry Moore. Indeed, he seems to be blurring the lines between East and West, maneuvering between the conventions of traditional sculpture, which favors realism, and the current Chinese avant-garde, which tends to focus on conceptual art. "While the Chinese avant-garde movement is closely connected to China's social and political climate, Ju Ming does not adopt such an agenda," says exhibition curator Joyce Fan. "Rather, he offers the audience a slice of life that they can relate to."

Born in 1938, the last of 11 children in a poor family, Ju started his career as the apprentice to a Buddhist statuary craftsman. He set up a workshop and produced religious and mythological figurines but still longed to become an artist. When he was 30, he persuaded Taiwan's leading modern sculptor, the Western-educated Yuyu Yang (1926-97), to accept him as a student. Under his tutelage, Ju learned the new techniques being employed in contemporary art. Still, he considers both parts of this education vital to his development. "The Chinese traditional way alone would be too conservative, but the Western style alone would be lacking in tradition," he says through a translator.

Ju first won international notice in the late 1970s with his acclaimed "Taichi Series," consisting of large, angular bronze giants frozen in tai chi exercise poses. "Tai chi has an international language which people understand and appreciate," he says. Unveiling the latest and final part of the series, "Taichi Arches," in Singapore last week, Ju reflected on how the works have evolved over the past 30 years. The early works, he says, are of solitary figures, because he practiced the highly spiritual Chinese art alone at first. But as he grew more experienced he practiced with a partner, as demonstrated by the newest sculptures of two ...