The Taiwanese artist’s upcoming exhibition in Venice with Albion Jeune explores the material history of pigment
In Venice, a new exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Taiwanese artist Su Yu-Xin explores how colour itself carries the traces of geography, trade and empire. Presented by Albion Jeune at Lo Studio, the exhibition brings together around fifteen paintings alongside more than a dozen wax-based sculptural works, marking the first time these works have been shown in the city.
At the centre of Su’s practice is the material history of pigment. Rather than treating colour as a neutral tool, the artist approaches it as a geopolitical substance shaped by extraction, movement and exchange. Many of the pigments used in the exhibition are hand-ground by Su from minerals, soils and sediments gathered from coastal sites around the Pacific Rim. Through this process, colour becomes a record of geological and human histories: an index of trade routes, colonial encounters and environmental transformation.
The exhibition includes a monumental painted scroll measuring over three and a half metres in length, alongside large paintings that evoke seascapes and distant horizons. Although these scenes appear abstract, they are rooted in specific locations. Su draws on two shorelines that have shaped her life: the eastern coast of Hualien in Taiwan, where she grew up, and the Californian coastline where she now lives. In the works, these horizons seem to face one another across the ocean, suggesting the long histories of migration, exchange and circulation that connect the Pacific world.
Venice provides a particularly resonant setting for the exhibition. Historically a major node in early global trade between East Asia and Europe, the city functions here as both backdrop and witness. The project draws inspiration from the journeys of Marco Polo and the historic movement of pigments and materials between continents, placing Su’s work within a longer narrative of cultural and material circulation.
For Su, painting itself is a site where disciplines intersect. Her works treat landscape not only as image but as material reconstruction. By collecting and transforming pigments drawn from the Earth’s crust, she reorganises minerals, organic matter and synthetic substances into layered compositions that carry the physical presence of the places from which they originate. As such, her paintings can be understood as geological assemblages as much as visual compositions.
Born in Taiwan in 1991 and now based in Los Angeles, Su studied ink painting at Taipei National University of the Arts before completing an MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions at institutions and galleries including UCCA Beijing, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and the Saatchi Gallery in London, as well as at galleries in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai and Los Angeles.
The Venice exhibition arrives during a significant moment in the artist’s career. It follows her London solo exhibition Precious in 2024, a major museum presentation at the Orange County Museum of Art in 2025, and the publication of her first monograph documenting the development of her practice. Today Su is known to work with an extensive archive of pigments – more than two hundred in total – made from stones, minerals, shells and earth samples gathered from across the American West and the wider Pacific region.
By transforming these materials into luminous fields of colour, Su reveals how even the most elemental components of painting are embedded within global histories. In Venice, her works invite viewers to consider pigment not simply as colour, but as a substance shaped by landscapes, trade and time.
Su Yu-Xin’s work will be on view at Lo Studio, Venice, 4 May – 18 July. The 4 May opening reception, in partnership with ArtReview, will include a walkthrough and Q&A with the artist, hosted by ArtReview Editor-in-Chief Mark Rappolt.
