HappenArt

Su Xiaobai
Painter
Location: China / Germany

Su Xiaobai’s works are an intense study of materiality and texture. Blending its signature hairspray with oils. Clay and pigments. Also, painting on linen. Bricks and wood instead of canvas. Xiaobai makes intricate marks, cracks and cracks on the surface of his works. His engraving echoes his painting. He often reproduces the densely layered plans of his lacquered works in the delicate medium of paper and ink.

1990’s.

Any attempt to find patterns in Su Xiaobai’s works is foiled. The artist having eradicated the subjects of his practice in the 1990s. His pieces deal precisely with the pictorial surface as such. A two-dimensional plane. You can’t see through or inside. We look at him, the gaze stops there. The work becomes an object in its own right, confronting the viewer with its presence. He does not reside in the fanciful realms of the imagination. But in the real, tangible world, engaging with “the idea of being himself”.

Gerhard Richter and Markus Lüpertz.

Born in Wuhan in 1949 and trained at the famous Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Where he was a pupil of Gerhard Richter and Markus Lüpertz. Xiaobai’s practice is a fascinating fusion of Eastern and Western influences. The artist currently living and working between Shanghai and Düsseldorf. Su Xiaobai has had many important solo exhibitions in China and Germany. Notably at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2007. At the State Second Television ZDF. Su is also included in the renowned collections of the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. And the Ostasian Museum, Cologne.