Three Colours - Crimson

Su Xiaobai's expressive composition reinvents lacquer-a material used in Asia for more than 3,000 years-by combining it with oil paint on canvas. In Su's hands, the material transcends cultural signifiers and challenges our expectations, moving it into realms of gesture and abstraction. Between 1987 and 2003, Su studied painting in Germany, where the influence of European avant-garde art pushed his practice away from works of recognizable objects and figures and towards a focus on color, shape, and the texture of his surfaces. Yet his primary material-lacquer-seems to embed his work in Chinese tradition, making it a distinctive fusion of artistic practices.