Ocula Report 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life 15 Feb 2019 : Natalie King for Ocula 'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
Ocula Conversation Ellen Altfest The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...
Ocula Report Colomboscope 2019: Cross Currents and Dissonance 8 Feb 2019 : Nada Raza for Ocula On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...
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...
