Renowned sculpture artist Sui Jianguo’s 50-year retrospective exhibition ‘Step by Step and Hesitation: Sui Jianguo 1974-2024’ is being held in his hometown of Qingdao, showcasing his growth and development trajectory from 1974 to 2024. This large-scale artist case study exhibition presents the history of the development of modern and contemporary Chinese sculpture art. This exhibition marks the first show of the X-Sea Art Museum’s focus on artists from Qingdao, and it will be the first solo exhibition to utilize all the museum’s exhibition halls, paying tribute to the artist who hails from Qingdao. By connecting indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces, over 280 pieces (groups) of Sui Jianguo’s works are displayed, along with 7 series of documentary combinations, and 3 series of works are disclosed for the first time. In 1974, at the age of 18, Sui Jianguo began to formally study Chinese landscape painting under the guidance of his teacher Liu Donglun in Qingdao. At that time, his social identity was still a young worker at Qingdao National Cotton Mill No. 1. It would take four more years before he started systematically learning sketching and color, the realistic modeling skills required for art school entrance exams at night school. The following year, due to a job transfer, he entered a local cultural center, where he was exposed to sculpture art and decided to make it his life’s pursuit. The next year, he became a freshman in the Sculpture Department of Shandong University of Arts. This retrospective exhibition, for the first time, traces back to 1974, rather than the time when the artist first started sculpting or was admitted to an art academy, as the beginning of his creative journey. The exhibition is open from September 29th to February 28th, with specific business hours subject to the daily opening status.
