Sui Jianguo solo exhibition

Showing at Pace Beijing until Saturday 14 April

Sui Jianguo came to sculpture in the 1980s, at an age when the medium was still predominantly used for public realist monuments in China. This solo exhibition is a selective retrospective looking back at his work since 1987, the year he moved from Shandong to Beijing – and it is a career worth mapping. Sui is an artist who has long influenced trends in Chinese sculpture, and he remains a key figure as the head of the sculpture department at China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA).

The selection on display here represents his artistic career fluently and beautifully without overcrowding the space. Seen together, the threads that the artist has been pulling at throughout his career become apparent. His exploration of form, and interest in expressing force by combining different materials in his sculpture, emerge to the fore.
 

In the first hall stand classical plaster figures based on traditional Greek sculptures made by Sui’s students, but very quickly we move into more abstract and tactile territory. ‘Earthly Force’ (1992-1994) is a series of stones wrapped in industrial metal cords, strewn across the floor. The dinosaur-egg-sized rocks seem to push out against the rusting nets.

Another work that has been well represented is ‘Legacy Mantle’, conceived during the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The empty sculpture of a ‘Mao Suit’, as it is often dubbed, represents China as a shell, in which different leaders, regions and ideologies can be exchanged to fill an externally unchanging uniform. Here, the first version of this work is imposingly large, accompanied by a small maquette and deserving of the space it takes up.

The exhibition brings us right up to Sui’s changing interests as they bend towards manipulating forms. ‘For Presence’ (2006-ongoing), the artist has been adding a drip of blue paint to a metal stick every week, and will do so until his death. The result so far is an industrial, dark globule reminiscent of the lacquer-making process. Rather like a retrospective, the globule will become a strange, self-made monument to the artist’s life – a fitting symbol for this comprehensive and important exhibition. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing