Los Angeles–based artist Su Yu-Xin transforms natural and synthetic materials into pigments, using these colored substances as both the medium for paintings and the focus of her research. Driven by a profound interest in the materiality of color, she examines how pigments are extracted from the Earth’s crust through processes like mining, grinding, and refining, and how color is attributed as a property based on the physical sources from which it derives. Her painting Water Close to Land #2 (Coastal Road on the East Side of Taiwan) (2023) just entered OCMA’s collection and is currently installed in her solo exhibition Searching the Sky for Gold, on view at OCMA through May 25, 2025.

Join Su Yu-Xin in conversation with OCMA CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman as they discuss materiality, the intersection of art and science, and the ways in which color shapes our understanding of the world.

OCMA’s Artist Talks are generously sponsored by Cheryl and Bruce Kiddoo.