It may be the changing nature of Venice – the way the city itself manifests the cyclical rhythm of all things, suspended between decay and renewal – but alchemy seems to permeate this year’s Biennale and its accompanying exhibitions. In one of the city’s most scenographic exhibitions, Chinese artist Su Xiaobai has installed his three-dimensional painted works in lively groupings throughout the magnificent Soranzo van Axel Palace, a 15th-century palace distinguished by its Gothic style, unusual frescoes, and porous, articulated architecture. The exhibition brings together 35 paintings that trace the 77-year-old artist’s relationship with natural varnish, spanning three decades, from his 2003 work to new paintings designed specifically for Venice.
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“SU XIAOBAI’S CHEMICAL UNIVERSE“ |
Through a meditative practice grounded in ancient traditions and deep spirituality, Su transforms the ancient medium of paint into a radiant sculptural language. The resulting layered surfaces are animated by a subtle interplay of light and shadow, with luminosity emerging from within the material itself, inviting the eye into a kind of geological exploration that reflects the chemical transformations it carries out.
An official side event of the 2026 Venice Biennale, “The Chemical World of Su Xiaobai” is presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Speaking before the well-attended opening, Su agreed that there was a form of chemistry in his process. For him, drawing is about matter and energy. “It’s like changing and enhancing lacquer by mixing it with other materials,” he tells Observer. “I’m always trying to find a new way to utilize this traditional material, paint, in a new way.”
Trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Su bridges the traditions of Chinese literature with post-war European painting, having gradually turned away from oil paint and socialist realist photography towards a material practice existing between painting and objects. His teacher first introduced him to painting and taught him traditional techniques, but Su gradually transformed and reinvented these methods, bridging the gap between Chinese artistic tradition and European modernism.
He explains that there is always a dialogue with the material. “The varnish is very strong, but I always resist that force,” he says, noting that his studio is more like a laboratory than a traditional atelier.
The process is necessarily slow, and is accomplished through a patient process that involves applying more than 20 layers to each panel. This embodied knowledge of paint techniques manifests itself in layering and layering, giving the works tonal complexity and temporal depth. To further enrich the temporal stratification of her surfaces, Su also incorporates Fujian ruins into the work: roof tiles salvaged from houses demolished to make way for skyscrapers are painted with black or red lacquer, pierced with precise holes at each corner and hung one by one in a suspended installation that seems to float in the air, a testament to a bygone era quickly erased by the country’s modernization.
The traces and grids crossing monochromatic surfaces evoke traditional Chinese painting while suggesting a vital tension between order and chaos, transforming these graphic assemblages and pigment deposits into embodiments of entropy. “The grid creates order and chaos,” Su explains. “I try to overcome chaos and bring order back with each layer of the painting.” This is also why he refuses to wait for the paint to dry completely. It intervenes before it solidifies, disrupting any stable crystallization of the gesture into form.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is the latest Su series, Nyaw nyawA Chinese poetic phrase that embodies feelings of transience and disappearance. Destruction and renewal are embraced as essential parts of each painting’s transformative cycle. In drawing chemistry, the solid surface appears to flow into the transparency of the crystal, which reflects
At times, the works appear almost molten, the material temporarily at rest before transforming again. Each cycle of transformation must pass through destruction to be regenerated, and these lacquer paintings evoke matter in perpetual motion through different chemical states. They seem to be alive within the space, almost transforming with it – living entities that evolve through and with their environments, as Sue himself acknowledges.
When asked whether the work is about Taoism or spirituality, Su emphasized that such meanings are not deliberately imposed but remain intentionally open, allowing viewers to perceive them through their own interpretations and responses. The overall design of these quiet and contemplative works, floating through space in towers, creates a suspension in time that invites contemplation – slowing the viewer to investigate, appreciate and understand the process and layers of time that each work embodies.
Through the experimental reinvention of a traditional material—developed through a process of listening to and negotiating with the material itself rather than trying to control it—Sue’s works reveal how drawing can become a form of alchemy: an interplay of matter, energy, and transformation that teases out the mysteries of the universe in the very process of creation.
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