Sui Jianguo

each incised in Pinyin and numbered 3/6, executed in 1998

Private American Collection

Britta Erickson, On the Edge, Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West, Stanford, 2005, pp. 100-101  (alternate edition exhibited)
Jeff Kelley, Sui Jianguo: The Sleep of Reason, San Francisco, 2005, pp. 13, 20-21, 77, 88-89  (alternate edition exhibited)
Lü Peng, A History of Art In Twentieth Century China (Revised Edition), Peking University Press, Beijing, China, 2009, p. 982 (installation view at 2000 Shanghai Biennale)
Lü Peng, A History of Art In Twentieth Century China, Edizioni Charta, Milan, Italy, 2010, p. 1118 (installation view at 2000 Shanghai Biennale)

This work is generally in good condition.
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Sui Jianguo’s sculptural piece, Dying Slave, is inspired by Michelangelo’s masterpiece of the same name; the great Italian Renaissance artist's seminal work which seeks to render in a highly realistic manner the titular slave’s final struggles before his death, a sculpture that so ironically writhes with such life. Sui Jianguo has borrowed the original work’s form, but has donned his slave in a Chinese traditional tunic, evoking immediately the archetypal “uniform” of the Cultural Revolution, which serves as a highly potent representation of the turmoil from this time long passed. Sui is the most important contemporary Chinese sculptor, and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In the nineties he began to create many sculptural works that would remain within his oeuvre for many years, including the well-known The Legacy Mantel series, a series which features yet again the Chinese traditional tunic. Rather than clothing figures in this tunic, Sui’s attention turned specifically to subverting the previous idolisation of this uniform. Sui Jianguo has also previously produced works such as the Made in China series in opposition of China’s rising commercialism, and remains to be a highly representative Chinese contemporary artist.