I owe my first encounter with Xiaobai Su’s work to the idea of a television boss and an exhibition catalogue. Markus Sch?chter, the Director-General of ZDF, had brought it along, so I leafed through this catalogue while he was telling me about the artist. I had only looked at a few of the photos of his paintings but realized immediately there is something very special about Xiaobai Su’s work. The powerful earthy colours and the physicality of his paintings were stunning. I immediately understood Professor Sch?chter’s enthusiasm because I felt just the same way.

　　The first meeting with Xiaobai Su in person was very jolly, and our conversation was extremely stimulating. While his pictures had fascinated me through the impact of their powerful colours and materials, the artist himself turned out to be a humorous, dynamic, intelligent man, full of ideas and stories. It was as though we had already met a long time ago and were now becoming better acquainted. A visit to his studio in Shanghai then strengthened this sense of familiarity with the artist and his work. So when Markus Sch?chter put forward the idea of exhibiting Xiaobai Su, a plan very quickly took shape. We had no hesitation, because this project is about presenting not a political stance but a strong personality in the world of art who, through his paintings, radiates a very human attitude to life.

　　After returning to China from Germany, Xiaobai Su began to explore the traditional craft of lacquer work, learning this technique with great enthusiasm. The use of lacquer has now become an integral and indispensable component of his abstract art, giving them a special physicality and allowing us to sense the great influence of Chinese culture. The ways in which he applies jute to wooden panels and then multiple layers of lacquer, embellishing and refining to transform a two-dimensional picture into something with spatial depth, the material and textural strength give the mainly large-format paintings an extraordinarily haptic quality and imparts a tremendous presence.

　　Art has the privilege of being intercultural. Art is an underlying universal principle of human creation. Art connects cultures. Art is a language that everyone understands. And this is made clear to us again and again precisely by those who wander between the different cultures. Xiaobai Su is one of these wanderers. Their function is to build a bridge between the cultures inasmuch as the works of art they create bring out what is different and what is shared in our cultures. Even if, as in the case of Xiaobai Su, their artistic language is abstract – showing no recognisable structures or shapes and refusing to represent our everyday worlds – it speaks directly to our feelings, sparks associations in our mind, shows us our past, and plays with the idea of our future. It sings within us like music, with lyrics in red and ochre, in black and crimson, in every variation of rust-red, in matt green and mellow brown.

　　Xiaobai Su leads us into a world full of poetry. Yet this is not the poetry of words. No sounds are strung together to form an utterance. Rather, it is the emotions of the colours that pulsate within us; it is the structural patterns of the surfaces that move us; it is the materials that are alive. We see the poetry, we feel the poetry. Words are not needed, for art needs no words. It is pure poetry.

　　Xiaobai Su has understood this and – without words – he fulfils his function of conveying a sense of belonging and grace, earth and heaven, strength and love. He brings this closer to us with and in his pictures. His story fuses with ours, becoming a universal experience full of passion and dynamism.

　　　　　　　　　　　　Sabine Langen-Crasemann, board member of Langen Foundation