Su Xinping The Walking Man, The Departing Horse

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP (Beijing) will present Su Xinping's solo exhibition "The Walking Man, The Departing Horse" on May 12, 2024.

Su Xinping was born in Jining City, Inner Mongolia, in 1960. He was enlisted in the army for military service in 1977. He graduated from the Painting Department of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1983, and upon graduation, he taught at the Fine Arts Department of the Inner Mongolia Normal University. In 1989, he received an MFA from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and became a lecturer. From 2014 to 2022, he served as the vice-principal of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is currently the director of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Academic Committee, professor emeritus, and doctoral supervisor.

Su Xinping, an artist active in China's contemporary art scene since the 1980s, is recognized for his pioneering contribution to Chinese printmaking, whose media of expression span from oil painting, printmaking, and video to sculpture. Su Xinping's art practice adopts the physical space as a leitmotif, such as his early works on the grassland that accrued him notoriety in the art world. In the 1990s, Su Xinping, as a witness and participant of globalization, translated the living conditions of his contemporaries in his works before returning to exploring the sense of space, which explored notions of boundaries through the elusive and tangible, figurative and abstract spaces. There are various spatial relationships in Su Xinping's works; the prominent figures set against a distant landscape form multiple spatial overlapping relationships with the horse. As Su Xinping addresses his relationship with the world, he constantly adjusts his position in the art world through active participation. He prefers being the observer of oneself. An artist who pursues his reality, isolated from the hustle and bustle outside of his studio door, Su Xinping prefers building an ideal country inside, and this sense of space and distance is synonymous with the spatial relations in his works on canvas.


This exhibition presents Su Xinping's ten latest oil paintings and sculptures from recent years. The exhibition " The Walking Man, The Departing Horse" highlights the two iconic images of the artist's practice. The "Walking Man," what the artist considers the symbolic ethos of our time, widely popularized through his large-scale sculpture, and the "Departing Horse" embodies the artist's inner world, one that allowed him to return to the origin and source where art and ideals began for him. This exhibition resonates with Su's 1980s iconic piece, "Sleeping Man, Departed Horse," portraying his state of being in the 1980s. This show offers a retrospective take on Su Xinping's art practice in recent years.

Horse and man, the two symbolic elements in Su Xinping's works, resonate with the artist's ongoing view of nature and convey his subjects of "heaven," "earth," and "man" through a variety of materials. Su's reverence for the heavens and the celestial and his introspection of the self are the core of Su Xinping's lasting and diverse artistic vitality. As the curator of this exhibition, Yukihito Tabata, says, "Through Mr. Su's works, we get a strong sense of his inquiry about the nature of things and what it means to be human. "

This exhibition will be on view until June 15th, and you are welcome to visit.