Sui Jianguo’s newest solo exhibition, Trace, will be unveiled at Pace Beijing on March 9, 2017, at 4pm. The exhibition will present the artist’s latest creations from 2016 to 2017.

A leading figure in Chinese contemporary sculpture, Sui Jianguo has developed richly conceptual creative ideas and expressive techniques over nearly forty years of artistic practice. As both creator and educator, he has constantly pondered and explored the foundations of sculpture. The artworks presented in this exhibition can be seen as a summation of his creations over the past decades. In his artistic explorations under the title The Shape of Time, which have been ongoing since 2006, the artist has gradually revealed the internal relationship between himself and sculpture, in what has grown to become his main creative thread. The artist has successively cast off the cathartic expressions of his early career and the iconographic techniques that followed, stripping away modeling techniques in a process of the “minimization of creation” that draws him ever closer to the core of creation itself.

Sui Jianguo
Planting Trace No.4
2013
cast bronze
290x185x130 cm
? 2017 Sui Jianguo, Courtesy of Pace Beijing

Sui Jianguo
Planting TraceNo.3
2014-2017
cast bronze
165x 100x72 cm
? 2017 Sui Jianguo, Courtesy of Pace Beijing

In the series Traces, featured in this exhibition, the work of the sculptor has been simplified into the grasping and pinching of the hands. These most basic acts of the body allude to the substantive relationship between the creator and the material. With its unique submissiveness and softness, this clay pressed by the hand stands as the most faithful record of the artist’s body. In the undulating surface of the clay, the artist’s hand becomes an absolute, undeniable presence. As he affirms his own identity, the artist also bestows the clay with a completely new name—through the interaction with the artist’s body, this soft material, which has long been overlooked as a mere carrier throughout the history of sculpture, has for the first time become a portrait of itself, and through industrial technology in 21st century, has assumed the properties of a public monument. In the video work Physical Trace, exhibited in tandem with the sculptures, the indispensable role of the body as agent is revealed with more clarity. Each instant of the artist’s application of force into the clay is captured with a high speed camera, bringing the act of sculpting closer to an instance of performance art. The hands that continuously “perform” on the curtain wall of the exhibition space fill the spatiotemporal gaps in the depressions on the surface of the clay, and blend the two into a complete scene.

Sui Jianguo
Compress Trace
2014-2017
cast bronze
66 x 102 x 55 cm
? 2017 Sui Jianguo, Courtesy of Pace Beijing

Sui Jianguo
Physical Trace(film still)
2013
Video
8 mins
? 2017 Sui Jianguo, Courtesy of Pace Beijing

For the most recent sculpture works presented at this exhibition, the artist used high definition 3D scanning and printing technology to capture and restore the contours of his hands on the surface of the artwork. The artist’s application of this new technology in his creations is the result of a breakthrough, realized in 2015, in experimentation that dates back to 2008. This breakthrough overcame the technical limitations in magnifying the original clay studies, and now bring an unprecedented level of detail to the surface contours of the sculpture. This breakthrough in precision is more than just technical. It draws closer to the artist's aesthetic ideal—artworks generated through technology that record the properties and results of forces applied to a material with the precision of scientific experiments, approaching the objective revelation of the corporeal nature of sculpture. This openness to scientific and industrial technology is the essence of the modernity in Sui Jianguo's art.

The exhibition runs through to April 1, 2017.

About the artist

Sui Jianguo (b. 1956 in Qingdao, Shandong province) 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, where he is a professor in the Sculpture Department.  He has been praised by art critics for being a “pioneer venturing to the farthest reaches of Chinese sculpture.”

Sui Jianguo’s art explores his unique understanding and recognition of creation, form, alternative media, alternative methods, and space-time.  His sculptures are ingenious fusions of concept and form, as many of his works utilize large-scale force to impact viewers.  Sui Jianguo’s early works carry strong symbolic content, most of which carefully relates the peculiarities of society and history. His later creations gradually became disconnected from his own identity and began incorporating a bigger visual angle, thus makinghis concepts of cultural space-time apparent. Sui Jianguo’s work also succeeds in bringing forth introspection on the artistic process in modern China.  Whether it bethe Realism in hisearly works or the classic shapes in his later Mao Jacket and Dinosaur pieces, both rely on the wisdom of native Chinese genealogy and channels of culture to serve as ways to solve problems, as outlets.  The work reveals an obvious academic’s severely critical standpoint regarding society and human morality.His works also touch on the realms of video and public performance.

About the exhibition

Dates: 2017.03.09 - 2017.04.01

Venue: Pace Beijing

Courtesy of the artist and Pace Beijing.