Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Taiwanese artist Su Yu-Xin visualizes intangible elements of Earth. She’s created a series of paintings around this idea for her exhibition titled Searching the Sky for Gold. Now on view at the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), the show is her first solo museum exhibition outside Asia. In this new body of work, she uses natural and synthetic materials to create pigments and delves into atmospheric and geological phenomena within her paintings.
Su uses color as a material and creates pigments by collecting and processing elements from places like Malibu, California, and the coasts of Taiwan. Her self-made hues become the basis for her fluid landscape paintings. This creates a conceptual loop; the pigments and her compositions are both derived from Earth and mark a brilliant way of showing how everything is interconnected.
Su’s interest in color goes beyond functionally creating it. She examines how pigments are extracted from the Earth through mining, grinding, and refining. The paintings in Searching the Sky for Gold feature swirling, nebulous forms that give a body to invisible elements such as the salty air of the California coastline, underground mine fires in Utah, nuclear gases in New Mexico, and smog in the Chinese mountains. Many of these elements are dangerous, making her work wonderous yet cognizant of the hidden forces shaping our world.
Searching the Sky for Gold is one of two exhibitions currently on view at OCMA. The second show is titled Unearthed and includes ceramic artists Shuyi Cao, Tony Marsh, Keita Matsunaga, Yuji Ueda, and Masaomi Yasunaga. Running concurrently from January 31 to May 25, 2025, the two exhibitions explore the Earth using different forms of art making.
Artist Su Yu-Xin visualizes intangible elements of Earth.
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
She’s created a series of paintings around this idea for her exhibition titled Searching the Sky for Gold, which is now on view at the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA).
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Su uses natural and synthetic materials to create pigments and delves into atmospheric and geological phenomena within her paintings.
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Searching the Sky for Gold is on view until May 25, 2025.
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Installation view: Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold, 2025. Orange County Museum of Art. (Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio)