Los Angeles-based artist Su Yu-Xin’s first solo exhibition in the UK

The exhibition’s title, Precious, evokes all the associations seen within the paintings: hunting for treasure, memories of childhood, and beachcombing. By repeating the motif, Su asks us where we find meaning and why. Her dreamlike paintings present a natural world that acknowledges the harshness of economic and political realities. Yet, the most precious things in her works are free.

Albion Jeune is pleased to present Precious, Los Angeles-based artist Su Yu-Xin’s first solo exhibition in the UK. The exhibition consists of a series of dynamic paintings that examine the history of migration and the vicissitude of pigments through a geological perspective. Portraying sea caves, shells, and natural objects found along the California coastline, this new body of work invites us to consider the value attribution of material objects. The artist’s unique material language, in which she collects, extracts, and transforms organic and man-made color substances into the paint, is a fascinating interrogation of the politics of pigment: the pulverization of exploitative ecological and imperial histories into color. Through materiality and subject matter, the works in Precious act as portals between Los Angeles and Taiwan, sharing the artist’s journey and the cross-cultural dialogue of her diasporic identity and experience.

Born in Hualien, Taiwan, the artist has an academic background in traditional techniques such as the ‘boneless’ method of Chinese painting and nihonga, or “Japanese-style painting” that binds pigments derived from natural ingredients such as minerals, shells, or semi-precious stones with glue made from animal hide. The artist processes these pigments from collected natural materials, which she applies to the surface in layered washes to construct nebulous, multi-perspective horizons. For the

artist, colors are no longer mere visual signifiers but embodiments of their complex identities and origins. Su sources materials from various locales, deepening the relationships between subjects by often depicting the California coastline with materials sourced in the land itself.

Throughout Precious, the artist uses ground cowrie shells to create a spectrum of white hues across her paintings, evoking the forgotten history of trade and the invisible workforce. Originating in the oceans surrounding the Maldives islands, cowrie shells, or Cypraea moneta, were transported to various parts of Asia as precious goods in the prehistoric era. Later, this small marine product was used as a currency in the slave trade from the sixteenth century onward and eventually became a form of currency in several ancient Chinese provinces. Su is interested in the prevalence of these natural objects and how humans ascribe value to items based on their geographic location and scarcity, underpinning notions of invisible infrastructure through commodity trade.

Su Yu-Xin considers painting a place where multiple disciplines and perceptual capacities intersect. Painters have always played a vital role in the visual art industry, and the medium of painting reflects the discovery and re-invention of the material world. Hence, paintings bear witness to the history of the exchange between cultures and nature and project the painter’s role through wars and migrations; they manifest territorial invasions and restitutions and the exploitation of pigments and their trades. Su collects, studies, and processes these color substances scattered on the earth’s crust and invents a new order on the painting surface through drawing, compression, and accumulation. The exhibition runs until 17 November 2024 at Albion Jeune, 16-17 Little Portland Street, London.

Along with shells, sea caves are the central subject of this exhibition. Commonly found along the northern Los Angeles coastline, these architectural wonders are subjects of immense fascination for the artist for their geological formation from wind and sea erosion into cavernous grottos. In Bone Caves (featured below), Su presents a panoramic view of a double sea cave, immersing us within the tunnel as though the painting is transforming into the subject. The canvas is physically curved and monumentally proportioned, echoing the organic forms of sea cave walls while referencing the traditional horizontal perspective of Chinese scroll paintings. On the right, the setting sun commands our attention while the violet night sky unfolds simultaneously, evoking a sense of ancientness and capturing the ephemeral transition to dusk. The pigments bring their physical presence into the painting, becoming as much a protagonist as the landscape. For instance, the Green Sea comprises oxidized copper, pointing to California’s mining history. In contrast, the white pigment found in the moon and the sea cave is obtained from bleached coral, evoking our environmental loss and the circularity of materials.

The paintings in Precious are rhizomatic, with each painting leading to the next in a continuous process of experimentation. Monumental works allow an immersive perspective, while more intimate paintings, or ‘color swatches,’ serve as experimentation sites, enabling the artist to test new color combinations, motifs, or layering paint. In A Chase for Treasure, a concave map of the Pacific Ocean along the Equator, the artist applies swatches of whites, using materials such as diamond dust and silver alongside colors derived from shells and minerals. As in her inclusion of the cowrie shells and copper pigments, the use of diamonds links the paintings back to Su’s study of commodities and value in the capitalist system, reminding us that the value of these gemstones will change with the ebb and flow of the forming of both anthropic and planetary history.

The recurrence of these small, organic objects has a heartfelt quality. The exhibition’s title, Precious, evokes all the associations seen within the paintings: hunting for treasure, memories of childhood, and beachcombing. By repeating the motif, Su asks us where we find meaning and why. Her dreamlike paintings present a natural world that acknowledges the harshness of economic and political realities. Yet, the most precious things in her works are free.