Ocula Conversation Jess Johnson: Worlds Within Worlds Geometric patterns, anthropomorphic characters, architectural spatial environments, and relics of the ancient world appear throughout Jess Johnson's artworks.Johnson's solo art-ventures began in drawing, but her long-term collaborative relationship with animator Simon Ward brings her drawings to life in videos and virtual reality. The animator has...
Ocula Conversation Melati Suryodarmo: Performance Art as Trigger In 2012, Melati Suryodarmo opened Studio Plesungan in her native Surakarta, also known as Solo, the historic royal capital of the Mataram Empire of Java in Indonesia. Suryodarmo had returned to Indonesia from Germany, where she studied Butoh and choreography with Butoh dancer and choreographer Anzu Furukawa, time-based media with avantgarde...
Ocula Report Lagos Biennial 2019: Stories from Africa’s most Populous City 15 Nov 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Under the direction of Folakunle Oshun, the second edition of the Lagos Biennial (26 October–23 November 2019) includes works by over 40 Lagos-based and international artists, architects, and collectives. Curated by architect Tosin Oshinowo, curator and producer Oyindamola Fakeye, and assistant curator of photography at the Art Institute of...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Su Xiaobai was born in 1949 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. He graduated from the Wuhan School of Art and Design in 1969, and later joined the Oil Painting postgraduate studio at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1986. He was awarded an Arts and Culture Scholarship from Germany in 1987, which allowed him to pursue his postgraduate studies at the Düsseldorf State Arts Academy, from which he graduated in 1990. Su has been living in Germany and concentrating on his art since 1992.
Su Xiaobai’s works are influenced by Western modernism, which stresses modernity in forms and material, while also cultivated by local Chinese culture. Su has had a special fondness for Chinese lacquer, developed since his early years in industrial arts training. He feels that traditional Chinese lacquer technique is magnificent and delicate, at the same time rich and weighty; nevertheless, the latter features are not immediately apparent. That is why he employs the lacquer techniques in his 'painting', which endows the lacquer with the 'Literati grey' aesthetics, as he removes the clean and gaudy features of traditional lacquer. Therefore, the finished 'paintings' possess a modern form of beauty.
However, Su’s major concern is how to transform the beauty of the object into deeper cultural implications. His main focus is the enchantment of the material, i.e. the material imagination, where the image is only a glimpse of the ideas behind it, and not the artist’s way of expression.
Recent group exhibitions include Chinese Contemporary Abstract: 1980s until Present: Mindmap (2012), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, China; Yipai: Thirty Years of Chinese Abstract Art (2008), Beijing, China and Madrid, Spain. And solo exhibitions include Su Xiaobai Solo Exhibition at Raketenstation Hombroich (2010), Neuss, Germany; The Dynasty of Colours (2009), Langen Art Gallery, Neuss, Germany; Kao Gong Ji – Su Xiaobai Solo Exhibition (2008), Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; Great Form is Shapeless, Su Xiaobai Solo Exhibition (2007), Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China.
Ocula Conversation Pearl Lam Director and Founder, Pearl Lam Galleries Pearl Lam started exhibiting and promoting Chinese contemporary art in 1993 when she opened Contrasts, her first gallery in China. Today her eponymous gallery, Pearl Lam Galleries, has spaces in Shanghai, Hong Kong and at Gillman Barracks in Singapore. Over the past two decades, Pearl Lam and her galleries have consistently championed the...
