Su Su: From Your Special Friend

Kavi Gupta presents From Your Special Friend, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Beijing-born, Pittsburgh-based artist Su Su. This exhibition coincides with the inclusion of Su Su’s work in the groundbreaking exhibition Wonder Women, inspired by Genny Lim’s eponymous poem and featuring thirty Asian American and diasporic women and non-binary artists responding to themes of wonder, self, and identity through figuration, curated by Kathy Huang for Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, CA; and State of the Art 2020 at the Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, FL; and follows her recent participation in There Is Always One Direction, the widely applauded exhibition during Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 at the Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz Private Museum, Miami, FL; and acclaimed group exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; and The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA.

Su Su’s paintings express the complicated interplay of aesthetic and societal influences that inform her daily experiences as a Chinese-born, female artist living and working in the United States. Her early painting education in China was, ironically, rooted in the history and techniques of classical Western figurative painting. Similarly, her most influential childhood cultural interactions were dominated by imported American entertainment products, like Walt Disney movies.

Su Su considers the work in From Your Special Friend an empathy offering—a gift to replace a lie of diminishment with a multitudinous truth.

The exhibition brings together works from two distinct bodies of work: Su Su’s masterful, traditional oil paintings on canvas; and her more experimental Bombyx paintings, made by injecting streams of oil paint through silk, using a sui generis technique of Susu’s invention.

Image: Su Su, Be Your Mirror, 2022 Oil on silk, 41 3/4 x 51 1/2 in.