1

White Rabbit Gallery Stage 6 Visual Arts Case Study

He Xiangyu 何翔宇: Art and Alchemy

“I wanted to be like a magician…”

He Xiangyu Tank Project, 2011 – 201, Leather, 150 x 890 x 600 cm, image

courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

A ‘soft, deflated tank not fit for warfare.’ Painstakingly sewn by an army of women trained by the artist, the military machine is a life-size replica of a Soviet-style tank stitched from over 400 pieces of fine Italian leather.

Artists’ Practice The Structural Frame The Cultural Frame Conceptual Framework: Artist/Artwork/World

Outcomes: P7, P8, P9, H7, H8, H9

This Case Study is focused on:

o Reading and analysing extracts of art critical writing

o Understanding ‘visual codes’ and iconography – applying the structural frame to understand how

artists create meanings in their works through their choices of materials and their visual language

o Understanding how contemporary artists work in ways informed by globalisation and a

postindustrial marketplace, incorporating theories of visual culture

o Developing art critical writing skills in analysis, interpretation and evaluation of selected artworks

o Comparative writing – learning how to compare works (by the same or different artists) in order

to make inferences and deductions

2

Note to teachers and students This Case Study focuses on the practices of the artist and the critic. In the first instance, students

encounter the artworks themselves, in the gallery and/or in reproduction or online. A sequence

of learning activities begins with a discussion of selected works and video clips, followed by

examples of art writing and artist interviews, with questions. These provide information about

the artist but are also models of critical practice. Whole class and small group tasks are

suggested, with links to other artists, art movements and/or critical theories. An extended

response question, with marking guidelines, requires students to develop an argument that

demonstrates their understanding of the artist’s practice. The Case Study may be implemented

over 4 -10 hours, depending on teacher and student interests and needs.

Background Born in 1986, He Xiangyu is a member of a new generation of conceptual artists in China using a

range of materials and techniques to articulate cultural and social concerns.

He Xiangyu began his Cola Project in 2008. For this work the artist boiled down 127 tons (60,000 bottles,

or approximately 135,000 litres) of Coca Cola over the course of a year. The material residue resulted in

a highly corrosive, pungent earth-like substance, and a black ink that Xiangyu used to make Song Dynasty-

style landscape paintings. Cola Project recalls ‘earth art’ works from the 1960s by artists such as Robert

Smithson whilst also providing a commentary on the effects of western consumer culture on

contemporary China, by subjecting its products to a profound process of material transformation.

Equally ambitious in scope, He Xiangyu’s Tank Project (2011–13) is a life-size military tank made entirely

of luxury Italian leather. The work took two years to create, and was hand-sewn by an entire factory of

female needle workers, specially trained by the artist. This collapsed and deflated object suggests the

steady advancement of Western materialism in contemporary China, and highlights the inter-

dependencies of political and economic power.

Text adapted from http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/he_xiangyu_inside_the_white_cube_2014/

He Xiangyu Tank Project (detail) 2011 – 2012, Leather, 150 x 890 x 600

cm, image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

3

‘All the effort that went into making this tank is very, very important because it is an integral part of the project. When we finished the project I thought we had only made the outer form or appearance of a tank but in fact, with the effort and work that went into this project, an actual tank could have been built.’ (He Xiangyu)

Teaching / Learning This Case Study may be approached in a range of different ways, depending on the particular

interests of teachers and students. Strategies may include:

o Class and/or small group discussion of He Xiangyu and a comparison with other artists and their

working methods

o Independent research or collaborative investigations

o Debates or dialogues exploring He Xiangyu’s ambitious and provocative installations and his use

of surprising materials.

o The creation of student blogs or websites

A: Individually, students read each of the three texts and answer the questions

before attempting the extended response.

B: In small groups students may choose to investigate:

o He Xiangyu’s material practices – how are particular works produced, and what materials and

technologies are involved in the selected works?

o Specific artworks that use global brands as image or material: Andy Warhol’s soup cans, Coca-

Cola bottles and Brillo boxes; Wang Guangyi’s ‘Great Criticisms’ series of Political Pop paintings,

Ai Weiwei’s continuing trope of the altered Han Dynasty urn, Julian Meagher’s still life paintings,

contemporary recontextualisations of Flemish ‘Vanitas’ still life

o The relationships between works by He Xiangyu and other contemporary artists who employ

unexpected materials in their works. Students could consider:

Gao Rong, ‘The Static Eternity’ (an entire traditional Chinese house in which every aspect

is made of stitched fabric)

Shi Jindian ‘Beijing Jeep’s Shadow’, a military jeep made of wire

Lin Zhi, ‘Afraid of Water’ (a Chinese bathroom and squat toilet entirely made of mud)

Japanese artist Yuken Teruya’s shopping bags containing tiny intricate forests

Australian duos Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, and Ken and Julia Yonetani

Japanese Motoi Yamamoto and his use of salt in monumental installations

Chinese artist Cai Guo-qiang has ‘drawn’ with gunpowder and firecrackers

Zhang Huan’s ‘Buddha’ series made of ash from burned temple prayers

C: Optional extension activity. Research notions of ‘materiality’ in contemporary

art practice.

In a digital age, does the material practice of an artist still produce meaning?

4

Useful References and Resources

http://artradarjournal.com/2015/11/25/chinese-conceptual-artist-he-xiangyu-interview/

http://leapleapleap.com/2012/05/he-xiangyu-the-primacy-of-process/

http://dailyserving.com/2012/03/alchemy-in-reverse-he-xiangyus-cola-project/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0AAZLbhfa4

http://www.artnet.com/galleries/white-cube/he-xiangyu-inside-the-white-cube/

http://www.whiterabbitcollection.org/

www.teachingchineseart.com

Essential Vocabulary for this Case Study

Installation

Conceptual Art

Postmodernism / Postmodernity

Post-Mao

Globalisation

Fabrication

Satire/Satirical

Materiality

High-concept

Structural Frame Cultural Frame

Artist/Artwork Artist/World

Practice

Materiality

Visual codes

Chinese military history

Contemporary art as an international

commodity

The artistic ‘means of production’ globalisation

5

He Xiangyu Tank Project (detail) 2011 – 2012, Leather, 150 x 890 x 600 cm, image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

With a life-size military tank made entirely of luxury Italian leather, hand crafted by an army of artisan female needle workers, He Xiangyu challenges our preconceptions of materials and our assumptions about art objects.

Readings and Questions

Reading #1. Introducing He Xiangyu

Artist He Xiangyu was only three years old when People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled into

Beijing on June 4 1989 to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations that had occupied the vast

spaces of Tiananmen Square, in the centre of the city, since early that year. Manned by young

and fearful recruits from far provinces, they were ‘S59’ tanks, based on the armoured vehicles

donated by the Soviet Union earlier in the 20th century. He Xiangyu spent two years making a

replica of a Chinese tank using Italian leather in place of steel, stitched with waxed thread in

place of rivets.

Today, many people of He Xiangyu’s generation do not recognize the famous photograph of a

thin white-shirted man carrying a shopping bag and standing in the path of an armoured tank, in

Tiananmen Square in 1989. Nobody knows who he was or what happened to him. Was he

executed? Imprisoned? Or has the Chinese citizen known as the ‘Tank Man’ lived an anonymous

life somewhere in China ever since? His fate remains a mystery, and the events of that time have

been shrouded in secrecy. The image of the tank has become highly sensitive in China, along with

any other reminders of the events that took place in Beijing on that June day. The artist himself

simply says that his tank is based on “the same tank that was used during sensitive incidents in

China’s recent history.” The tank, of course, is a more generalised symbol of military power and

authority, and may be interpreted in multiple ways. He Xiangyu is adept at creating a visual

language of unexpected materials and forms, in large-scale installations that reflect on the

contemporary realities of Chinese society.

6

In 2008 he began a project on an industrial scale. For Cola Project he boiled 60,000 bottles, almost

135,000 litres of Coca-Cola (the amount consumed by the inhabitants of his home town each

year) down into a black coal-like sludge, smelling like a chemical by-product. He used ink mixed

with this residue to paint misty landscapes in the style of the Song Dynasty masters, thus literally,

physically overwriting the visual language of the imperial past with the globalized, corporate

present-day. Another element of this installation, two jade skeletons, were carved by artisans

skilled in this traditional craft to the exact dimensions of the artist’s own skeleton, determined

via an MRI scan. The pelvis and thigh bone of the gleaming white jade were boiled in Coca-Cola,

resulting in an alarming discoloration and corrosion. Cola Project transformed the American

product of consumer desire into something disgusting and disturbing: a reminder that the fast

pace of urbanisation and technological change may come at the cost of our consumption and

destruction of nature. The artist, who says he himself drinks cola every day, has grown up

knowing nothing other than the globalised, materialist, fast paced ‘new China’. He represents

the consumption culture which now pervades almost every corner of the globe in both a physical

and a metaphysical manner.

Tank (2011 – 2013) is a replica of the Soviet-designed armoured vehicles that became prototypes

of all subsequent armoured vehicles used by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The artist

says he found the tank used as the basis of his sculpture near an army base at the frontier

between China and North Korea. It was a ‘T34’, a Soviet tank used in World War II and given to

the Chinese, who began to copy them. He Xiangyu says his team had to sneak into the army base

in the middle of the night to measure the different parts of the tank by hand, in order to replicate

it. It took 4 months to determine all the measurements needed to produce the detailed plans

needed to create an exact simulacrum, using expensive Italian vegetable-dyed leather. It took

250 full-scale leather hides to create the outer ‘skin’ of the tank, sewn together with 50,000

meters of wax string. The finished work weighs over 2 tons.

Deflated, flattened, a parody of a fierce war machine, the tank evokes the abject failure of

military might and reminds us of the inevitability of global power struggles. It seems to have

collapsed under its own weight.

Luise Guest, 2015

Note: The T34 is actually a Soviet tank used in WW2, notably against the Germans in Operation

Barbarossa. It was well-armoured, fast, lethal, and tough. After the war, the Soviets gave China 1800

T-34-85 tanks. The Chinese started copying these and called them Type 58s.

Focus Questions

1. What materials, processes and procedures are used by He Xiangyu?

2. What can you infer about his material AND conceptual practice?

3. What is surprising or unusual about his practice?

4. Other artists (most notably Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Ai Weiwei) have used

the image of Coca-Cola’s recognisable global brand in their work. What is different about

He Xiangyu’s ‘Cola Project’?

5. Why do you think He Xiangyu chose to make ‘Tank’ from leather, and stitch it together?

7

He Xiangyu Tank Project (detail) 2011 – 2012, Leather, 150 x 890 x 600 cm

Image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

Reading #2. He Xiangyu: The Primacy of Process Glossary

Maximalist. Maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an aesthetic of excess and

redundancy.

Parlance. A particular manner of speaking, an idiom.

Free Market Ideology. A market based on supply and demand, with little government control.

Supra-individual. Over, above or greater than the individual.

The artist He Xiangyu (born 1986) has made a quick name for himself in the contemporary art

world. His reputation, for the most part, owes itself to the scale and grandeur his work has taken

on, both uncommon for an artist his age. The huge, post-apocalyptic landscape mountains of

black crystalline residue seen in his Cola Project (2009), created by boiling and reducing 127 tons

of Coca-Cola over the course of more than one year, is a prime example of the bravado that backs

his practice, as is Wu He You Zhi Xiang (2009), a 26-ton pile of dead wood reigned in the corner

of Today Art Museum by a massive chain and anchor that threatened to cave in the gallery floor.

However, with most of He Xiangyu’s work, the end result is secondary to the processes, both

physical and psychological, that lead to its spectacular fruition.

Cola Project has been embraced by some as a critique of the invasion of Western culture into

China, of the arching domination of free-market ideologies over his young generation; indeed,

the seething, large-scale destruction by a Chinese artist of capitalism’s tastiest flag-bearer makes

such a reading difficult to resist. The critic Gao Minglu, however, offers a more insightful analysis

into He Xiangyu’s practice, marking He’s work as essentially Maximalist, or primarily dependent

on the personal relationship between the artist and the material object. He’s interaction with

Coca-Cola began with small-scale experimentation indoors in his Beijing studio, but eventually

ballooned to transcend the individual and incorporate the public. Through an extended network

of personal connections in his hometown of Dandong, Liaoning, the artist secured an entire

lumber mill and employed a team of migrant workers to carry out his vision, meanwhile

somehow persuading both local police and environmental authorities to turn a blind eye to his

otherwise suspect activities and their daily billows of pungent, toxic smoke. In the popular

parlance of Chinese contemporary art, He’s long arms transformed Cola Project into a work of

social intervention, an execution of power on supra-individual scale.

Einar Engstrom, 2012 http://leapleapleap.com/2012/05/he-xiangyu-the-primacy-of-process/

8

Focus Questions

1. The writer suggests that in He Xiangyu’s work, the end result is secondary to the processes

involved in its making. What processes were used in ‘Tank’ and how do they contribute to

the meaning/s of the work?

2. Art critic Gao Minglu says that He Xiangyu’s work is “dependent on the relationship between

the artist and the material object.” After looking closely at ‘Tank’ how can you describe the

relationship between artist and artwork? 3. The writer describes ‘Cola Project’ as an act of social intervention. Do you agree? Assess the

social impact of a work such as ‘Tank’ or ‘Cola Project’ both as process and as an art product.

Reading #3. He Xiangyu’s New Directions

Adapted from ‘New Directions: He Xiangyu’ at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing,

describing a body of work in which the artist draws the feeling of his tongue inside his mouth

each day, like a diary, or a map.

Best known for sculptural works combining comedy and high concept, He Xiangyu here begins to examine his own internal landscape, revealing an inner topography depicted in a highly sensitive painterly language. During a brief stint in the U.S. where language barriers proved difficult to navigate, He Xiangyu began to translate the feeling of his tongue inside his mouth into visual imagery. The act of translation, always aimed at demystifying the subject, here only seems to further complicate it. The difficulties of speaking a foreign language and reproducing unfamiliar sounds, the curl of the tongue that produces “rat” as opposed to “that”, become a function of He Xiangyu’s body mapping, supplanting the oral, and aural, by reaffirming the centrality of visual representation. Executed over the course of four years, this presentation of Palate Project is composed of six groups of drawings using watercolor, ink, and mixed media on paper. Identifiable anatomical structures dissolve and re-emerge, eventually evolving into colour fields of yellow with only the slightest hints of form.

http://ucca.org.cn/en/exhibition/new-directions/

Focus Questions

1. How does He Xiangyu’s practice as described for ‘Palate Project’ differ from his earlier

largescale dramatic installations?

2. Each of the three readings – and each of the artist’s projects described – suggests that the

process of making the work is as important as the end result. Do you agree? Argue a case

for or against this proposition.

3. As a contemporary artist, He Xiangyu works in ways that challenge past conventions of

artmaking. He is often described as a conceptual artist. Research what this term means and

explain why He Xiangyu’s practice can be defined in this way.

9

Comparative Art Criticism: An Essay

Apply your understanding of He Xiangyu’s practice to an extended argument about the nature of

contemporary practice, comparing his body of work with the practice of another selected

contemporary artist in order to arrive at your own conclusions. Your discussion must be

supported with evidence drawn from the works themselves and the ideas of other art writers.

Answer the question with reference to ‘Tank’ and ‘Cola Project’ compared with a work or works

by ONE of the following artists:

• Shi Jindian • Shen Shaomin • Gao Rong • Bharti Kher • Do Ho Suh • Ken and Julia Yonetani

Plan and write an extended response to this question:

Assess how contemporary artists embed complex meanings in

their works through strategic choices of materials, techniques

and processes.

Shi Jindian

Shen Shaomin

Gao Rong

Barti Kher

Do Ho Suh

Ken and Julia Yonetani

10

Marking Guidelines

Descriptor Mark Range

o A comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the

practice of the selected artists is evident and sustained

throughout o A sophisticated analysis and interpretation of the visual

codes, materials and techniques used by the selected artists, demonstrating extensive knowledge and thorough

understanding of the works within their contemporary context, informed by contemporary theories of art

o Appropriate art terminology is employed fluently and

persuasively

A

9 - 10

o A sound knowledge and understanding of the practice of

the selected artists is evident and well sustained o A good analysis and interpretation of the visual codes,

materials and techniques used by the selected artists,

demonstrating sound knowledge and understanding of the

works within their contemporary context o Appropriate art terminology is employed competently

B

7 - 8

o Some knowledge and understanding of the practice of the

selected artists is evident o A satisfactory analysis and interpretation of some visual

codes, materials and techniques used by the selected artists, demonstrating some knowledge and understanding

of the works in a more descriptive manner o Some appropriate art terminology is employed more naively

C

5 - 6

o A limited knowledge and understanding of the practice of

the selected artists may be expressed in less coherent

ways o A simple analysis and interpretation of some visual

codes, materials and techniques used by the selected

artists, demonstrating a developing knowledge and

understanding of the works, is applied in a descriptive or

more limited manner o Art terminology is used in very simple ways

D

3 - 4

o A foundational understanding of artmaking practice o Limited, poorly researched or prepared, revealing an

elementary understanding of the visual codes, materials

and techniques used the selected artists o Little or no attempt to apply appropriate art terminology

E

1 - 2