Sui Jianguo - Art

Art

Sui has been a very active artist on the stage of modern and contemporary art in China. He 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 Sui 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. His work ‘Memory’ is a wall made out of old railroad ties. The ties have been ground down just as humans ground down by life, and they become part of a dividing wall, a boundary.

Many Sui early works reflect his personal experiences and explore, to a lesser or greater extent, his anxieties and feelings of imprisonment. He began his ‘Mao Suit’ series in 1997. This series can however 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 has 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’; it 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, 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 also 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 rule of bringing the contemporary art of modern China to the world. His works have been well recognized by the Western art world.