Su Xiaobai’s lacquer show

Su Xiaobai will open a 35-work lacquer exhibition at Venice’s Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel as an official Collateral Event of the 2026 Biennale. (wallpaper.com) The show, “Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe,” runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026, in the Cannaregio palazzo and is presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (suxiaobai-foundation.org) Biennale organizers listed 31 official Collateral Events and 100 National Participations for the 61st International Art Exhibition, which is curated by Koyo Kouoh. Su’s project is one of those sanctioned events outside the national pavilion structure. (labiennale.org) Su has worked almost exclusively with natural lacquer since 2003, using a material more often tied to ritual vessels, furniture, and decorative surfaces than to contemporary abstract painting. The Venice selection spans those first lacquer experiments through new works made for this presentation. (e-flux.com) A central group in the exhibition is the “Niao Niao” series, described by organizers as a new body of work tied to ideas of transience and evanescence. Pearl Lam Projects showed the series in Shanghai in 2025 as a preview of the Venice installation. (culturalee.art, pearllam.com) The venue is part of the story. Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel is a late-Gothic Venetian palace built in 1473, and Biennale materials say it has four renovated floors and about 3,000 square meters of covered exhibition space. (wallpaper.com, labiennale.org) The exhibition is curated by Stephen Little, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s curator of Chinese art, and designed by architect Kulapat Yantrasast. Organizers say admission will be free. (myartguides.com, suxiaobai-foundation.org) The foundation says its broader mission is to support artists and scholars working with traditional materials and techniques in contemporary art. In Venice, that means lacquer is not just the surface of the work but the organizing idea of the entire installation. (suxiaobai-foundation.org, wallpaper.com) By May, visitors to the Biennale will encounter Su’s lacquer paintings not in a white-box gallery but across the rooms of a 15th-century Venetian palazzo. That pairing of old material and old architecture is the frame the exhibition is using to introduce the work. (e-flux.com, wallpaper.com)