Sui Jianguo is a Chinese artist and sculptor. He is a professor and ex-chairman of the Department of Sculpture in Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, is a contemporary Chinese artist.
Background
Jianguo Sui was born in 1956 in Qingdao, Shandong, China. Both of his parents were factory workers and were largely absent during his early childhood due to the workload imposed on them by the Mao government. Growing up, Jianguo Sui witnessed the harsh realities of the Mao years. During this time Maoist socialist realism became the approved art style. This style generally portrayed Maoist ideals in a romantic positive light. These images were used to create a cult of personality for Mao.
Education
Sui Jianguo received a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Fine Arts Department from the Shandong University of Arts in 1984 and a Master of Arts in the Sculpture Department from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989.
Career
When he was at the age of ten and the schools were closed as part of the Cultural Revolution Sui Jianguo began to work in the factories with his parents. The painting was not a career option for Sui Jianguo until the age of eighteen when he broke his arm, which took him away from factory work. Soon after, and with the permission and guidance of his father, he began studying painting at night under the cover of darkness. His studies and practice gave fruit to his first true work: a traditional Chinese landscape painting, which he completed in 1976 after the death of Mao.
Sui Jianguo took advantage of the new freedoms, and moved to Jinan and then Shandong, where he received his major in sculpture. After gaining his master's degree, he traveled to the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, and other places to display his art. He also worked as a guest professor or speaker at several universities outside of China. Finally, Sui Jianguo returned to become chairman of the department of sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Sui Jianguo has participated in many group and solo exhibitions, including Motion/Tension: New Work by Sui Jianguoin Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2009); The Hague Under Heaven: Sui Jianguo -Sculpture in Museum Beeldenaan Zee, Hague, Holland (2011), Sui Jianguo in Pace Beijing,and Physical Trace-Sui Jianguos’work in Gallery Sheffle, Bad Humbeger, Germany (2012) as well as The City of Forking Paths: The Sculpture Project of the Expo Boulevard, World Expo Shanghai (2010), Reactivation, 9th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, China(2012), The Unseen, Fourth GZ Triennial, Guang Zhou Art Museum, China (2012).
Politics
Upon his return to the factory, Sui Jianguo painted propaganda posters of Mao in the socialist realist fashion. After Mao's death, the Chinese government loosened its grip on the population, and educational reforms were quick to follow.
Views
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 making his 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 be the Realism in his early 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.
Connections
There is no information on whether Sui Jianguo is married or has any children.
