SU XIAOBAI'S SHANGHAI STUDIO
STORIES OF THE ARTIST STUDIOS
In 1984, Su Xiaobai's oil painting At the Auntie's House won a national art award. As a result, he was appointed as a full-time painter at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan, where he was given a modest studio of around 30m² – his very first dedicated workspace.
The following year, he left Wuhan to pursue advanced studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Two years later, he moved to Germany to attend the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a graduate student. That departure was a turning point; the free studio became a thing of the past.
As a professional painter in the 1980s, Su had a 30m² studio at Hubei Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1987, Su began studying under the artist Konrad Klapheck at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Outside of class, he had no studio space of his own. He lived in a cramped 8m² student dormitory, far too small to accommodate large-scale works. Finally, in 1990, he found a converted garage in Düren that he could use as his studio. This garage, with its loft and skylight, became both his workspace and temporary living quarters. Düren was just under an hour's drive from Düsseldorf, and Su commuted back and forth between the two cities.
Su standing in front of his student dormitory in Düsseldorf
Second studio in Düren, Germany, 1990
Friends Visit Su's Düren Studio
By 1992, Su had relocated to an apartment on a sloping street in Solingen. This ground-floor, two-bedroom apartment had plenty of space, although one of the rooms was partially underground. He turned the semi-basement room into his third studio and built two additional bedrooms in the large main room to create a more livable home. Solingen became a place where he could finally feel settled; it was where he played the dual role of father and artist. His semi-basement studio, roughly 60m², had street-facing windows, casting the shadows of passersby across the floor. The center of the studio was marked by a simple, makeshift Doric column.
Third Studio in Solingen, Germany 1992
Su's Solingen Studio with the window to the street
In late 1993, Su purchased two adjacent properties in the rural village of Weidingen, 176 kilometers south of Düsseldorf. Constructed as a school in 1937 and later used as a residence for American soldiers, the buildings became his new home and studio. He dedicated one building to family life and the other, a spacious 400m² area, to his art. This was his fourth studio. Su settled here for a decade, splitting his time between making art and cultivating the land, transforming his surroundings into a homestead and creating a home with his wife and children. Over these ten years, he became fully integrated into village life. Meanwhile, this period was marked by dramatic shifts in the art world, and his works grew in both scale and quantity.
Fourth Studio in Weidingen, 1993
Installation Project at Su's Weidingen Studio
Su's Weidingen Studio Open-house to school children
In 2003, Su set his sights on Shanghai. He rented a vast former factory building on Jinyu Road, located at the intersection of urban and rural landscapes. The building, with its towering 9m ceilings and sprawling 600-square-meter floor plan, was surrounded by a large outdoor courtyard. The site had previously served as a pig farm and grain warehouse. Su transformed the space, dividing it into two studios, one large and one small, with an additional four rooms built in the courtyard for storing art materials. What was once a corridor between buildings was repurposed as a workshop for processing wooden panels. This space, his fifth studio, has been his creative base since 2003. Here, Su and his assistants craft the wooden frames and textured surfaces for his paintings, using a three-roller mill to grind lacquer and pigments into unique materials. Mastering the skills of carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, masonry, and heavy lifting became essential for the team.
Su rented an old factory building in Shanghai as his fifth studio in 2003
Renovation of the Shanghai studio: full-height partition stud wall
Renovation of the Shanghai studio: well-ventilated outdoor area
Su's Shanghai Studio in 2024
In 2018, Su leased a four-story building near his studio to serve as a dedicated archive for his works. He spent a year renovating the space, integrating climate control to regulate temperature and humidity, along with measures to block light and dust. The art archive is illuminated by ERCO lighting, providing optimal conditions for viewing and preservation.
Su's four-story archive and storage building in Shanghai
Painting storage
Painting Storage