He Xiangyu solo exhibition

In 2009, when he was still only in his mid-twenties, He Xiangyu shot to fame with ‘Cola Project’, for which he took thousands of litres of Coca-Cola and reduced them down to a coal-like, brittle substance. These dried-out clumps of Coke were then piled up in the Wall Art Museum in Beijing to resemble a bare, sloping mountain, reminiscent of an environmentally and culturally degraded landscape, ruined by mass consumption.

Predictably, the sugary global brand then humourlessly intervened and the work was taken down, but it has appeared at various locations around the world since – with materials documenting the number of plastic bottles emptied, and processes used to create the work. Since then, He’s ambitious and politically engaged works have continued to win him recognition for their thoughtfulness, simple beauty and combination of art-history references and social commentary.

He’s latest pieces are now on show at White Space in Caochangdi, and while their scale is somewhat smaller than that of ‘Cola Project’, their cleverly expressed and daring statements are no less challenging. The self-titled exhibition includes a miniature piece called ‘My Fantasy’ (2012) – a self-sculpture of the artist, dressed-up to look like a deceased (Communist) state leader, laid out in a glass cabinet. Wearing a Mao suit and shrouded in a red blanket, this direct reference to the Great Helmsman’s own mausoleum is nothing if not bold. The figure itself, made from silicon, fibreglass and real hair, is also startlingly lifelike. It’s also reminiscent of his infamous ‘Death of Marat’, a sculpture of a dead Ai Weiwei that caused concerned calls to the emergency services in 2011 when it was placed in the window of a German gallery. In ‘My Fantasy’, He reappropriates an image usually reserved for publicly dominant figures. What is more, it is an image of death – one that both puts the individual to rest and immortalises them anew in distorted ways.

In another work, grains of rice, sealed under wax in glass bottles, are painted with the names of global state leaders – including China (though only deceased ones). Their names are mixed in one jar, to decay more slowly than the world around.

A more eye-catching piece on show is ‘Sorry’ (2011): a stainless-steel door coated in a sunny yellow lacquer and placed against the wall, as if it were leading to a space beyond. But its handle is a burning-hot bulb, and there really is no passage into another place, or a ‘brighter future’, as the glowing light seems to suggest.

The audacity with which the artist tackles his subjects, while maintaining a certain simple, yet grand, visual identity, makes this exhibition a welcome one. It doesn’t quite match up to ‘Cola Project’ or his ‘Man on the Chairs’ (2011), where trained dancers were asked to manoeuver across roughly-cut wooden chairs that still resembled trunks of timber. However, each smaller piece functions as an entity in itself, and the combination gives us a picture of the artist as both a cynic and a hopeful youth, who does not shy away from controversial subject.  Clare Pennington

Originally published in Time Out Beijing