Melding Chinese Lacquer With European Abstraction The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Su Xiaobai's lacquer paintings arrive in Venice with a material language that is at once restrained and exacting. At Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, the Chinese-German artist's new exhibition, Alchemical Universe, gathers 35 works that trace his evolution from early experiments to paintings made specifically for the city's 2026 Venice Biennale collateral program.

Curated by Stephen Little, curator of Asian art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), and designed by architect Kulapat Yantrasast, the exhibition occupies the rooms of the 15th-century palazzo in Cannaregio. Its installation emphasizes Su's preferred square format and the slow accumulation of lacquer, a medium he now uses exclusively. Some works are built through dense layers that are later scored or abraded and then covered again; others seem to hover, especially a group placed above a mirrored“sea” of Murano glass.

The exhibition's visual rhythm moves between stillness and pressure. One room presents a suspended forest of square forms resembling lacquered temple tiles in deep maroon. Another gathers small monochrome works in blacks and greys that quietly recall classical Chinese ink painting. Elsewhere, color appears to cut into the surface rather than sit on top of it, giving the works a sense of depth that is both physical and contemplative.

Su Xiaobai, who divides his time between studios in Shanghai and Düsseldorf, arrived at lacquer after a pivotal conversation in 2003, when Gerhard Richter advised him to stop working in oils and focus on the medium. He followed that advice, and the result is a practice that bridges Chinese artistic traditions and European abstraction without collapsing the distance between them. The work feels rooted in both lineages, yet committed to neither as a fixed category.

That cross-cultural position has also taken on an institutional dimension. In 2024, a foundation was established to preserve and promote Su's art. This year, it is launching a Curatorial Residency in Shanghai in collaboration with the University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design, with annual funding for selected participants.

At Venice, Su's lacquer surfaces do not simply illustrate exchange between East and West. They stage it, slowly and with unusual discipline, as a question of touch, time, and transformation.

MENAFN11052026005694012507ID1111098468