Xiaobai Su. The Elegance of Objects

A comprehensive look at paintings, objects, and installations by one of the most prominent artists on the Chinese contemporary art scene through a rich visual documentation surveying the artist’s oeuvre from 2007 to 2015. One of the most prestigious artists in Chinese contemporary art, Xiaobai Su is among a generation of legendary artists who left China in the 1980s. He adopts lacquer, a medium steeped in Chinese history, as his aesthetic means, and has developed a sensuous yet rigorous art practice that defies classification.  Driven by Chinese tradition, Xiaobai Su creates intriguing and magnificent work that speaks a Western language of visual abstraction, with the Buddhist mantra “All reality is a phantom, and all phantoms are real” as its core. Luscious and mysterious, his body of work is defiantly sculptural yet exquisitely delivered– a constellation of extraordinary objects. Through around 300 images, this volume presents the complete work of the artist.