He Xiangyu was born 1986 in Kuandian, Liaoning province, and is based in Beijing and Berlin. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Shengyang Normal University in 2008.
He Xiangyu is part of a generation of Chinese artists that grew up in a period of rapid urbanisation, and his practice can be seen as a conceptual laboratory that investigates diverse personal, social and political themes. ‘I am seeking to adjust and guide people's perception through the material changes within the object,’ he has said, and he has used a range of media to reflect on materialism and obsolescence in society, or the institutionalisation and commercialisation of contemporary art. His large-scale The Coca-Cola Project (2009-2011) involved boiling down a vast quantity of the fizzy drink, reducing it to a black, coal-like residue. For his Tank Project (2011-2013), he and a team of collaborators made an exact, full-size replica of a T34 tank out of the finest Italian leather – a weapon of war re-imagined and reconstructed as a designer handbag.
He Xiangyu’s works are in public collections including the Kunstmuseum, Bern; the Pinault Collection, France; the Domus Collection, USA; the Boros Collection, Berlin; the Long Museum, Shanghai; the Mercator Foundation, Essen; the Artron Art Center, Shenzhen; the M WOODS Museum, Beijing; the Sishang Museum, Beijing. In 2014, He was a finalist in the ‘Future Generation Art Prize’ of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Kiev.
He has held solo exhibitions at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2019); the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015); the A4 Center for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2012); the Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral, Bad Ems, Germany (2011); and Wall Art Museum, Beijing (2010). He has taken part in group exhibitions at the Chinese National Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale (2019); the Mao Jihong Arts Foundation/Centre Georges Pompidou, Chengdu (2018); the Boros Collection, Berlin (2017); the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2016); the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015); the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014); the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev (2014); the 7th Busan Biennale, South Korea (2014); the 5th Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2014).