Ocula Report Havana Biennial 2019: Constructing the Possible 17 Apr 2019 : Federica Bueti for Ocula I first visited Havana in November 2016, a few days after Fidel Castro died, and just under a year before Hurricane Irma hit Cuba in September 2017. Since then, much has changed, including the hand-painted signs that punctuate the journey from the airport to the city centre, which today do not celebrate the revolution so much as the 'Unidad y...
Ocula Conversation Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui The exhibition Beyond Boundaries at Somerset House in London (12 March–2 April 2019) marked the historic contributions of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on the occasion of their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively. Spread across several rooms of Somerset House's...
Ocula Report The National 2019: New Australian Art 13 Apr 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The National 2019: New Australian Art features work by 70 contemporary Australia-based artists split across three venues: the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (29 March–21 July 2019), as curated by Isobel Parker Philip, curator of photographs at AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham,...
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...
