Blind Portrait Series, Sui Jianguo, "The Section of Experimental Art at the 17th National Art Exhibition"

The artist’ artistic expression features consistency. Whether focusing on the material or the concept, there is a prominent exploration of the relationship between the internal and external in his work. This relationship is expressed through clashes and fusions between powers and toughness of the two sides. In the beginning, maybe out of self-protection, the artist is inclined to emphasize his rationality and stubbornness while balancing the great tension between the environment and himself, and later he has gradually relaxed.

In the Blind Portraits, the artist has made three different clay statues while covering his eyes, and has left his handprints all over the clay surface. Then he has invited artisans make a ten-time copy of his original “manuscripts,” namely, giant sculptures. During the process, the artist turns himself into a blind person, in order to prevent relying on any conventional visual habits, but to create a work in space purely by touch. Under this condition, the process of touching and sculpting is more like a direct communication between the object and mind, between hands and materials. From a psychological perspective, rather than creating a new visual form, the process focuses on an internal search for self-existence. Namely, the traces of body are more important than the abstract form, and therefore, this is not a piece of sculpture, but a medium as a continuation of the body.