Professor shows art with a life of its own

It has taken Sui Jianguo 40 years to evolve from a worker at a cotton mill to a prominent sculptor who embraces a conceptual spirit. Once an amateur ink painter, Sui has dedicated himself to modernizing Chinese sculpture since the 1980s.

Sui's current solo exhibition at Pace Beijing, titled Touchable, continues the 59-year-old's insightful research in some essential questions of sculpture: What is the beginning of a sculpture? How does an artist's body movements interact with his work? And to what extent can a sculptor reduce his control over the work and accept unexpected changes?

The exhibition displays 12 works, all colored in black, that Sui has produced over the past two years. To make his art more "touchable", he passed over the regular refined materials such as bronze and marble. Instead he turned to plaster and polyurethane, which cost less and look quite plain. Plaster is a particularly common material - often used for modeling but too fragile for the final piece.