survey_02 — contemporary sculptors: seven Chinese artists

1. Sui Jianguo [Sui Jianguo] — 隋建国 (b. 1956, Qingdao (Shandong))

Graduate: Shandong Art Institute; Central Academy of Fine Arts, 1984; 1989

Sculpture and installation. His main theme is how physical material resists form: clay, steel, stone and the trace of the sculptor's hand.

• Series“Thinking Through the Hand”— casts of fists and fingers, enlarged to monument: the body as an instrument for measuring space.
• “Made in China” — a dinosaur built from steel rebar, and “Blind Portraits” — figures modelled by touch, without ever looking at the sitter.
• “Precipitation” — sculptures in clay and industrial materials in which form “settles” under its own weight.
• Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing; has exhibited at Pace Gallery, the Shanghai Biennale and UAP.

website

2. Zhan Wang — 展望 (b. 1962, Beijing)

Graduate: Central Academy of Fine Arts, 1988

Sculpture in stainless steel. He translates traditional taihu stones into mirrored metal — a “man-made landscape” set beside the city.

• “Artificial Rock” (假山石, since 1995) — a series of polished steel replicas of classical 供石 scholar's rocks: the stone loses its weight and begins to reflect its surroundings.
• “My Personal Universe” (2011) — blasting a rock and fixing the scatter of stone in metal: sculpture as the instant of explosion.
• “Urban Landscape” (都市山水) — panoramas of cities assembled from steel cookware and domestic metal.
• Works in the collections of the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and M+; has exhibited at Haines Gallery.

website

3. Liu Jianhua — 刘建华 (b. 1962, Ji'an, Jiangxi)

Ceramics and porcelain as sculptural material. He moves porcelain out of the applied craft tradition and into the space of contemporary installation.

• “Obsession” (迷恋) — porcelain women's shoes and bodies: gloss as a mask of desire.
• “Collected Letters” — hundreds of white porcelain “letters” laid out across the floor; shown at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco).
• “White Paper” and “Black and White” — an engagement with empty form and with fragility as an aesthetic category.
• Professor at Shanghai University; represented by Pace Gallery, a graduate of the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute.

website

4. Chen Wenling — 陈文令 (b. 1969, Anxi, Fujian)

Graduate: Central Academy of Fine Arts of China, 2008

Monumental figurative sculpture. Red skin, grotesque and fairground expressiveness — public work engaging mass taste.

• “Red Memory” (红色记忆) — a series of naked red figures: colour as a sign of celebration and of alarm at once.
• “What Are You Looking At?” and “Happy Boy” — exaggerated smiles that read at once as advertising and as critique.
• Dozens of public monuments in cities across China and Europe; works in the White Rabbit Collection.
• Formally, he continues the line of “political Pop” in sculptural material.

website

5. Yin Xiuzhen — 尹秀珍 (b. 1963, Beijing)

Graduate: Capital Normal University (formerly Beijing Normal College), 1989

Soft sculpture and installation. Her material is worn clothing: a personal archive stitched into cities, houses and books.

• “Portable Cities” — suitcases in which miniature cities are stitched from the clothing of the people who live there.
• “Collective Subconscious” — steel armatures covered with fabric: memory as shared material rather than private property.
• Works in Tate, M+ and the White Rabbit Collection; represented by Pace Gallery, a participant in the Venice Biennale.
• One of the key figures of Chinese art of the 1990s, alongside her husband Song Dong (a shared studio and a family archive).

6. Lu Zhengyuan — 卢征远 (b. 1982, Dalian, Liaoning)

Graduate: Central Academy of Fine Arts, 2009

Sculpture, object and painting. A master of hyperreal form and of the “reverse side” of things: for him the object matters more than its image.

• The project “84 Days — 84 Works” (UCCA, with Sui Jianguo) — a sculpture a day as discipline and diary.
• Series of hyperreal objects: crumpled paper, packaging, the “waste” of the process — material translated into bronze and marble.
• MFA from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he also teaches; has shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing, and at the Chengdu Biennale.
• His subject is the difference between a thing and its image: what we see is, in his work, always already a sculpture.

website

7. Liang Shuo — 梁硕 (b. 1976, Jixian, Tianjin)

Graduate: Central Academy of Fine Arts, 2000

Sculpture from found materials and “vernacular” architecture. He works at the intersection of craft, the village and the contemporary museum.

• A member of the “Post-Sense Sensibility” group (后感性) — the generation that brought bodily and everyday material into Chinese art.
• The project “Wuli Village” — a long-term study of rural construction: sculpture as a way of asking who builds the city, and how.
• Compositions of construction debris, wood and stone: “wrong” form is prized above industrial cleanliness.
• Works in the M+ collection, teaches at CAFA; has exhibited at Gallery Exit (Hong Kong) and Beijing Commune.