He Xiangyu
China
He Xiangyu was born in China in 1986 and currently lives and works in Berlin and Milan. As part of a generation that has witnessed profound transformations in Chinese society, economy, and international relations, his practice is rooted in the shared cultural experience and historical conditions of this cohort.
Working across painting, sculpture, installation, video, and publication, He Xiangyu engages with the macro turbulence of geopolitics and history, and the micro conflicts they imprint on individual lives. His projects unfold over extended timespans and accumulate substantial physical volume. Within his work, displaced materials, the embodied traces of sensory experience, and a detached historical perspective coexist and calibrate one another—reflecting the cognitive condition of a generation born at a historical fault line. He often employs non-linear structures to unfold narratives, revealing the dynamics of cultural collision, dissolution, and transformation within complex contexts.
He Xiangyu's work has been exhibited at institutions including CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; TANK Shanghai; Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai; OCAT Institute, Shanghai; Para Site, Hong Kong; TOP Museum, Tokyo; MoMA PS1, New York; The Drawing Center, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Rubell Museum, Washington, D.C.; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; Kadist Foundation, San Francisco; LACMA, Los Angeles; P420, Bologna; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin; MAXXI L'Aquila; and SONGEUN, Seoul, among others. His work has also been featured in the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial (2019), the 58th Venice Biennale, China Pavilion (2019), the 13th Lyon Biennale (2015), the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), the 5th Yokohama Triennale (2014), and the 8th Busan Biennale (2014).
He Xiangyu's work is held in the collections of M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Long Museum, Shanghai; Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; Sigg Collection, Switzerland; Pinault Collection, France; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; and Boros Collection, Berlin, Germany.
