Su Xiaobai: Su Xiaobai's Alchemical Universe
Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Venice, 2026

Su Xiaobai's Alchemical Universe is an official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Curated by Stephen Little, Curator of Chinese Art and Head of the Chinese, Korean, and South and Southeast Asian Art Departments at LACMA, and designed by architect Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture, the exhibition is installed across the historic rooms of Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel in Cannaregio from 9 May to 22 November 2026.

The exhibition presents 35 works spanning the full arc of Su Xiaobai's practice — from his first lacquer experiments in 2003 to recent paintings created especially for Venice — offering the most comprehensive survey of his work to date. Born in Wuhan in 1949, Su studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before completing postgraduate studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since 2003 he has worked almost exclusively with natural lacquer, a material with deep roots in Chinese ritual and decorative traditions, transforming it into a vehicle for layered, tactile contemporary abstraction. The exhibition marks a major milestone in the artist's international career.