Born in 1949 in Wuhan, China
Lives and works in Shanghai and Düsseldorf
A graduate from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts in Germany, and a member of the Association of Dusseldorf Artists 1844, Su Xiaobai has developed a visual language rich in personal experience and abstraction under the guidance of Konrad Klapheck, Gerhard Richter, and Markus Lüpertz, by breaking away from the skills mastered in Beijing.
Immersion in Western culture and separation from his homeland led Su Xiaobai to rediscover the duality between art and object, and renewed his perspective towards the traditional culture of his ancestry. Su became inspired by lacquer — a thousand-year-old plant material and a symbol of Oriental culture — upon his return to China in 2002. He began experimenting lacquer on linen, bricks, sackcloth, clay, vine, and wood as a substitute for oil on canvas. The artist paints layers of vibrantly colored lacquer in a structural and balanced composition, rendering a three-dimensional momentum. The seemingly arbitrary, yet meticulously deliberate handling of visual forms reveals the artist’s pursuit of aesthetics and his personal sense of reinvention.
Su Xiaobai has exhibited internationally, including: Su Xiaobai: Blue, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2022); Beneath a descending moon, breathing: The Paintings of Su Xiaobai, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2019); And There’s Nothing I Can Do, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe City, Japan (2018); Grand Immensity — The Art of Xiaobai Su, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2013); The Dynasty of Colours, Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany (2009); Kao Gong Ji — Xiaobai Su Solo Exhibition, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2008); and Intangible Greats, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2007).