Xiao Bo, born in Hangzhou in 1977, graduated from the Comprehensive Painting Department of China Academy of Art in 1999 and currently works and lives in Hangzhou. Xiao Bo’s works present a state of hidden subjectivity, where the trace of the subject is revealed through his method settings. The subsequent process unfolds like an automatic program, driven by catalytic conditions such as material properties, aesthetic intuition, language rules, or bodily movements. Each parallel series adheres to similar generative structures yet leads to different visual results.
Xiao Bo approaches painting as a continuous creative process governed by self-established methodologies. Structure itself serves as content, and the visual is merely an externalization of this structure. Throughout the creative process, the artist treats himself as an object, introspectively reflecting on the act of painting through the subtle fluctuations of his bodily movements to achieve a sense of "insight." His earliest project, the Frames series, utilized 24 paintings to represent a single second of imagery, discarding narrative to leave behind pure repetitive mechanisms. The Four Grids series, initiated around 2015, evenly divides the canvas into four equal quadrants and operates on a synchronized four-panel work mechanism. This synchronization and repetition dissolve painterly narrative, leaving the surface as a pure record of the act of painting that points toward a profound pursuit of constancy and emptiness. Transitioning from the medium experimentation of realistic oil painting to the rational reorganization of mixed media, Xiao Bo consciously breaks his own painterly habits. Treating repetitive mechanisms and structural boundaries as linguistic vessels, he shifts progressively toward conceptual discourse and multidimensionality, seamlessly fusing material attributes with painting processes through unceasing experimentation.
Nominated for the prestigious "AAC Art China · Annual Young Artist" award, Xiao Bo’s works have been widely exhibited at prominent institutions such as Platform China and Galerie du Monde, spanning major regions including Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In 2026, Leo Gallery (Hong Kong) brings his latest visual and structural explorations to Hong Kong, presenting an intellectual, rigorous, and sublime artistic panorama.