Su Xiaobai was born in 1949 in Wuhan, China. He lives and works in Shanghai and Düsseldorf, where he is a member of the prestigious Düsseldorf Artists’ Association, established in 1844. 

 

Su studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Wuhan (1965–1970), the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (1985–1987), and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1987–1992). These formative experiences at three distinctive institutions profoundly shaped his practice, resulting in a deeply personal visual language.

 

In his early career, Su excelled at traditional painting techniques, honing his craft with perseverance and passion.​ In his middle period, Su’s artistic journey took a contemplative turn. Leading a life of intense self-discipline, he consciously distanced himself from mainstream trends. Seeking simplicity, he embraced abstraction and refinement, gradually stripping his work of narrative and explicit meaning. In recent years, his focus has shifted to the materiality of his art, creating works that embody his ideal forms through a process he refers to as “creation.”  Both sensuous and rigorous, his works cross the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

 

Tiles are a recurring motif in his work, inspired by the roof tiles of traditional houses in Fujian, China. Each new piece begins with a complex and meticulously crafted base, and Su’s practice centers upon the use of dàqī, an ancient Chinese lacquer with a rich historical resonance. Su has mastered its properties, transforming the medium into a viscous “soup” that he applies to his surfaces. This lacquer, mixed with turpentine, damar resin, stone powder, metal powders, and synthetic mineral pigments, undergoes a process of drying that produces a crystalline surface reminiscent of glaze. The unpredictable interplay of drying stages results in diverse textures that inspire Su’s constant experimentation, embracing both failure and discovery as integral parts of his process. 

 

For Su, colors are more than visual elements—they are vessels of history and narrative. He seeks out pigments with storied pasts, such as cochineal red and Tyrian purple, or imbues them with meaning, as seen in his "Ulysses Blue." Su believes that color, as a material, possesses a secondary essence, and he persistently explores new approaches to infuse his monochromatic works with vibrancy and power. His art does not depict objects but engages with the concept of existence itself. 

 

The naming of his works is another central aspect of Su’s practice. Titles are inspired by Su’s voracious and diverse reading, immersing himself in literature, poetry, history, and spiritual traditions, and seeking out wise and inspiring individuals. Su believes that true artistry carries an inherent sense of nobility—an essence that is embodied by the artwork.

 

Su continues to innovate. He revisits and reworks older pieces, even destroying them to create anew. He currently experiments with smaller formats, working on tiles or intimate-scale paintings, and each piece retains the physical immediacy and spiritual profundity characteristic of his oeuvre.