Artist of the day, June 10, 2020: Sui Jianguo, a contemporary Chinese artist, professor, sculptor (#1017)

Sui Jianguo (1956), professor and ex-chairman of the Department of Sculpture in Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, is a contemporary Chinese artist.

He received a BA in the Fine Arts Department from the Shandong University of Arts in 1984 and an MA in the Sculpture Department from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989.

Sui has been an active artist on the stage of modern and contemporary art in China. He has had numerous solo and joint exhibitions in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, and most recently in the United States, in addition to his active schedules in China, and several high-profile exhibitions worldwide. He likes to work with hard and heavy materials such as granite and metals. His techniques of sealing, binding, tying and hammering created a relationship of association and confrontation between his materials, which resonate with his perception of life and his internal conflicts. Among his known works in the early 1990s are Land Depression, in which he entwines huge boulders in nets made from steel ropes, and Sealed Memory, a closely welded cabinet of thick steel sheets, which gives an oppressive sense of weight and blockage. Memory is a wall made out of old railroad ties. The ties have been ground down just as humans are ground down by life, and they become part of a dividing wall, a boundary.

Many of Sui's early works reflect his personal experiences and explore, to a lesser or greater extent, and his anxieties and feelings of imprisonment. He began his Mao Suit series in 1997. This series can be regarded as the conclusion of an important stage in his self-exploration. He draws on the powerful image of the Mao suit, not as an element of revolutionary attire but as a symbol of restriction and limitation. Sui suggests that none of the Chinese have truly taken off their Mao suits even though the revolutionary era is over. Sometimes Sui makes the Mao suits resemble Buddhas and at other times he turns them into hard shells. Recently, Sui has made fairly humorous, soft and almost transparent Mao suits. The Mao suit is perhaps coming to represent to the artist an object of fun.

In a more recent work, the red dinosaur, a symbol of imperialist China, like communist China, with the engraved door on the chest mentions "Made in China". This is a glance toward plastic toys from the start of the Chinese economic flight, and a symbol of an antiquated China moving toward being contemporary. Throughout the 1960s, it seemed that everything was "made in Japan", in the 1970s "made in Taiwan", and in the 1980s "made in China". The fabrication of finished products based on models and imported raw materials has become the economic norm of emerging countries.

Over all, Sui's work has well represented the views and expressions of his generation, the generation that survived Mao's Cultural Revolution. More importantly, as one of the most active and most productive artists in China today, and as the head of the department in the most prestigious art institute in China, he has brought fundamental changes to the contemporary art movement in recent China. Because of his influential works and through his educational efforts, abstract and conceptual sculpture have been well accepted by the ordinary Chinese people and by the authorities. Furthermore, he has taken the role of bringing the contemporary art of modern China to the world. His works have been well recognized by the Western art world.

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Mr. Sui Jianguo

Plaster Cube under flushing Water, One Week, 1987

Portrait Untitled, 1989

 Weightlessness
cast bronze, 1989

1990 Cage and Stone
rock and steel bar, 1990

 Inter Structure # 1
marble and steel, 1990

Deposited Memory
banboo cage & rock, 1992

Earthly Force
stone and welding steel, 1992-94

 Early Jacket, #4
Cast bronze, 1997

 Legacy Mantle print, 1997

1997 Legacy Mantle
painted steel, 1997

Legacy Mantle
Painting cast Bronze, 1997

 Clothes Wrinkle Study: Anatomy, 1998

 Clothes wrinkle Study: Died Slave
Painted fiberglass, 1998

 Study of Clothes Veins
Painted cast bronze, 1998

Made in China
painted fiberglass, 1999

 The Man is Crossing River, 2002

 Study of Clothes Veins: Right Arm
painted fiberglass and resin, 2003

Jurasic Time
painting bronze and steel, 2003

 Sleeping Mao
painted piberglass, 2003

 Rainbow Jacket
painted fiberglass, 2004

 Web, 2005

 Blind Portrait 2008

 Blind Portrait, 2008

 Made in China
Fiberglass rainbow painting, 2009

Made in China
container, 2009

Made in China
container, 2009

 Made in China
steel, 2009

 Motion and Tension
steel and electric machine 2009

 Rover
steel and electric machine, 2009

The Sand of Changsha, 2009

 Dream Stone, 2010

 Limited Moving
steel and electric machine, 2010

 Gravity
plaster, 2015