New Directions: He Xiangyu

The series “Everything we create is not ourselves” is the most important component of He Xiangyu’s (b. 1986) ongoing Palate Project. Now based in Beijing and Berlin, the artist recently settled temporarily in Pittsburgh, where the language barrier and the slow pace of daily life prompted him to begin an inward journey by transferring the feeling of his tongue against his palate onto paper.

In the years since 2012, He Xiangyu has moved from the emphasis on social systems and symbolic production that characterizes his earlier massive installations Coca Cola Project (2009-2011) and Tank Project (2011-2013), toward the expressive possibilities of physical experience.

These six groups of drawings span the three years during which He Xiangyu made these daily assignment-like renderings: from the earliest efforts which attempt to represent the roof of his mouth in linear outlines that evoke anatomical sketches (16-1); progressing toward experimental, broad strokes of color and loose contours (11-1); moving into bright, emotionally charged color fields of light and dark yellow (130-1, 72-1); and finally to the most recent works in which emotion gives way to restrained composition (68-3, 68-4).

He Xiangyu (b. 1986, Liaoning province) graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Shenyang Normal University and is currently based in Beijing and Berlin. Having first garnered attention for large-scale works like Coca Cola Project and Tank Project, He Xiangyu continues to defy commonplace notions carried toward young Chinese artists through a diverse body of works encompassing sculpture, painting, and performance.