Palate Drawing by Hexiangyu

Palate Drawing

Palate Drawing

To assist one's understanding, if we were to adopt the most straightforward way to talk about it, the works of art in “Palate Project” (ongoing since 2012) underwent at least two steps: the tongue’s tactile experience of its surrounding; and the translation of this sensation from the hand to surface. This unifies and shifts the symmetrical senses: taking the tentacle (tongue) and hand as the subject of the action and way of execution/tool, and the palate and (two-dimensional or three- dimensional) material’s front and back as “interface,” forming the cycle with
the understanding and transmission of feelings as its core purpose. If we were to experience this process independently, we would understand that the specifics (variables) are a lot more complicated. The tongue’s pressing force, the position it touches in the oral cavity, the state of the body, mood, texture, the material qualities of the interface, visual or olfactory interruptions, etc, would ultimately affect this translational process. Hence, the more rounds of such experiments are done, the more sensual experiences would be drawn, that would enrich sensibilities, rationales and knowledge about the experiment, which would provoke more complex imaginations, and thus, what gets translated onto the material interface would be more multifarious. If we were to conceive the oral project as semantic translation, such impulse to understand the process of things would, in contrary, seems boundless – akin to Joseph Levine’s argument on qualia, does the “oral cavity” actually exist? There is a rather romantic yet bittersweet beginning to this project that has been widely circulated and bears repeating.
It was in 2012 when He Xiangyu, whose spoken English was not yet fluent, traveled to the United States to participate in an exhibition and met his now-wife, a Korean- American. Although they had some obstacles in communicating, it was love at first sight. At their first family gathering in the US, while friends and relatives chatted enthusiastically in English or Korean, He Xiangyu was the only one who sat in a corner and felt bored. Amid his boredom, He Xiangyu licked his tongue against his moist and uneven palate and started a conversation and game with himself. The purpose of retelling this story is not to gossip. Still, to be reminded of the underlying basis of "Palate Project" that, even between the most intimate people, the inability to communicate and comprehend are still inevitable, can even be isolating and helpless, and how intolerably awkward and painful this must be. In this sense, this lasting and ongoing work of art is perhaps, on an implicit level, a (self-)communication, resistance, reconciliation, and healing in the face of the speechless caused by linguistic and social isolation. When we are standing in the physical space of the exhibition with a 7m-high ceiling, the walls around us are covered by four sets of 80 oral paintings, the scale and complexity of which are awe inducing, as if they were trying to devour the audience into the “oral cavity”! The first impression of these abstract paintings is both how naïve or primitive they are in some ways, like being in a cave occupied by countless lines, colors, and forms. It is apparent that the artist has compiled the experiences he has accumulated and pondered in his past "Palate Project" works. If we were to look closely, each of the four sets of paintings has its characteristics and evokes the imagination. For example, the paper, colored pencil, crayon, ink, and oil stick used in “Hard Palate 32-1” work together to allow the lines to wander continuously, interrupt, connect, and turn, and then lay out, absorb, clash, and cover with the colors, as if the teeth, tongue, and palate underwent a continuous process of chewing, licking, secretion, and swallowing. In another set titled “Hard Palate 20-1,” speech scrolls in black spread out, dominating the image as its primary subject. As the ink comes into contact with the paper, it flows, penetrates, compresses against and outlines the only remaining blank space, as if taking in a breath through the lips and mouth, the light slips in and combats the shadows, what is understood as light shapes shadow, has now turned into a counterattack where darkness has taken over the light. This kind of observation and imaginary connections continue to extend and deepen like diving into a cave full of stories and riddles.
In several of the more comprehensive representations of the “Palate Project,” the works’ spatial display allowed an overlap of the oral cavity and the cave, for example, the pink space with an opening arch at White Cube (2014) and the oral map at the Venice Biennale (2019). In fact, in the English language, the cave and cavity come from the same etyma. The juxtaposition of "Palate Project" and the cavernous form is perhaps an inevitable “coincidence.” This reminds me of Plato's “allegory of the cave.” The prisoners, trapped in the cave for life, could only face the shifting shadows projected on the walls by the fire, and were convinced that this is the truth of the world; only the freed prisoner, who climbed and underwent a painful transformation, would embrace the real world and face the light from the sun. The analogy of the divided line in The Republic is often used to explain the released prisoner’s experience coming out of the cave, that is, about the journey from seeing a shadow to seeing the physical object, and then from rational understanding of the intelligible world to the idea of goodness. Thus far, looking at the overall practice of the “Palate Project” since its early days, the artist's approach seems to have followed a similar process: from the first period of figurative depiction and creation of the forms of organs, to the representation of sensory imagery in chaotic colors, to shaping more complex materials and structures, and even to initiate the “Lemon Project” that is inextricably connected to the “Palate Project.” Rather than merely conceiving the “Palate Project” as a transformation from perception to vision, it seems more fitting to think of it as an “allegory of the cave” in the context of contemporary
art, where an imprisoned mute intends to emerge from the “oral cave,” with an attempt to understand the world through self-actualized practice. text by Shenchen

To assist one's understanding, if we were to adopt the most straightforward way to talk about it, the works of art in “Palate Project” (ongoing since 2012) underwent at least two steps: the tongue’s tactile experience of its surrounding; and the translation of this sensation from the hand to surface. This unifies and shifts the symmetrical senses: taking the tentacle (tongue) and hand as the subject of the action and way of execution/tool, and the palate and (two-dimensional or three- dimensional) material’s front and back as “interface,” forming the cycle with
the understanding and transmission of feelings as its core purpose. If we were to experience this process independently, we would understand that the specifics (variables) are a lot more complicated. The tongue’s pressing force, the position it touches in the oral cavity, the state of the body, mood, texture, the material qualities of the interface, visual or olfactory interruptions, etc, would ultimately affect this translational process. Hence, the more rounds of such experiments are done, the more sensual experiences would be drawn, that would enrich sensibilities, rationales and knowledge about the experiment, which would provoke more complex imaginations, and thus, what gets translated onto the material interface would be more multifarious. If we were to conceive the oral project as semantic translation, such impulse to understand the process of things would, in contrary, seems boundless – akin to Joseph Levine’s argument on qualia, does the “oral cavity” actually exist? There is a rather romantic yet bittersweet beginning to this project that has been widely circulated and bears repeating.
It was in 2012 when He Xiangyu, whose spoken English was not yet fluent, traveled to the United States to participate in an exhibition and met his now-wife, a Korean- American. Although they had some obstacles in communicating, it was love at first sight. At their first family gathering in the US, while friends and relatives chatted enthusiastically in English or Korean, He Xiangyu was the only one who sat in a corner and felt bored. Amid his boredom, He Xiangyu licked his tongue against his moist and uneven palate and started a conversation and game with himself. The purpose of retelling this story is not to gossip. Still, to be reminded of the underlying basis of "Palate Project" that, even between the most intimate people, the inability to communicate and comprehend are still inevitable, can even be isolating and helpless, and how intolerably awkward and painful this must be. In this sense, this lasting and ongoing work of art is perhaps, on an implicit level, a (self-)communication, resistance, reconciliation, and healing in the face of the speechless caused by linguistic and social isolation. When we are standing in the physical space of the exhibition with a 7m-high ceiling, the walls around us are covered by four sets of 80 oral paintings, the scale and complexity of which are awe inducing, as if they were trying to devour the audience into the “oral cavity”! The first impression of these abstract paintings is both how naïve or primitive they are in some ways, like being in a cave occupied by countless lines, colors, and forms. It is apparent that the artist has compiled the experiences he has accumulated and pondered in his past "Palate Project" works. If we were to look closely, each of the four sets of paintings has its characteristics and evokes the imagination. For example, the paper, colored pencil, crayon, ink, and oil stick used in “Hard Palate 32-1” work together to allow the lines to wander continuously, interrupt, connect, and turn, and then lay out, absorb, clash, and cover with the colors, as if the teeth, tongue, and palate underwent a continuous process of chewing, licking, secretion, and swallowing. In another set titled “Hard Palate 20-1,” speech scrolls in black spread out, dominating the image as its primary subject. As the ink comes into contact with the paper, it flows, penetrates, compresses against and outlines the only remaining blank space, as if taking in a breath through the lips and mouth, the light slips in and combats the shadows, what is understood as light shapes shadow, has now turned into a counterattack where darkness has taken over the light. This kind of observation and imaginary connections continue to extend and deepen like diving into a cave full of stories and riddles.
In several of the more comprehensive representations of the “Palate Project,” the works’ spatial display allowed an overlap of the oral cavity and the cave, for example, the pink space with an opening arch at White Cube (2014) and the oral map at the Venice Biennale (2019). In fact, in the English language, the cave and cavity come from the same etyma. The juxtaposition of "Palate Project" and the cavernous form is perhaps an inevitable “coincidence.” This reminds me of Plato's “allegory of the cave.” The prisoners, trapped in the cave for life, could only face the shifting shadows projected on the walls by the fire, and were convinced that this is the truth of the world; only the freed prisoner, who climbed and underwent a painful transformation, would embrace the real world and face the light from the sun. The analogy of the divided line in The Republic is often used to explain the released prisoner’s experience coming out of the cave, that is, about the journey from seeing a shadow to seeing the physical object, and then from rational understanding of the intelligible world to the idea of goodness. Thus far, looking at the overall practice of the “Palate Project” since its early days, the artist's approach seems to have followed a similar process: from the first period of figurative depiction and creation of the forms of organs, to the representation of sensory imagery in chaotic colors, to shaping more complex materials and structures, and even to initiate the “Lemon Project” that is inextricably connected to the “Palate Project.” Rather than merely conceiving the “Palate Project” as a transformation from perception to vision, it seems more fitting to think of it as an “allegory of the cave” in the context of contemporary
art, where an imprisoned mute intends to emerge from the “oral cave,” with an attempt to understand the world through self-actualized practice. text by Shenchen

Hard Palate 20-1, 2020, pencil, charcoal, japanese ink, pastel, colored pencil, oil colored pencil, oil stick, oil pastel, crayon, acid-free glue, acid-free oil-based marker on paper, 628.8 × 548.5 cm
Soft Palate 18-1, 2020, ink, pastel, graphite, oil stick, charcoal, pencil, colored pencil, oil pastel, acid-free oil-based marker on paper, 433.8 × 627.6 cm
Hard Palate 20-2, 2020, pencil, japanese ink, colored pencil, oil colored pencil, oil stick, crayon on paper, 600 x 522.5 cm

http://www.hexiangyu.com/

He Xiangyu’s art practice could be seen as a proving ground or a laboratory of materials and concepts, in which he investigates and engages with a variety of personal, social and political subjects. Grown up from a dramatic period of rapid urbanization in China, He’s practice is centered on representing or manipulating cognitive senses through transformation between different materials. He Xiangyu was named as a finalist for the “Future Generation Art Prize” (2014), and won the 10th CCAA “Best Young Artist” Award (2016) and the “ARTNET Emerging Artist Prize” (2016). Recent exhibitions include: Tales of Our Time Film Program (Screening of the film “The Swim”), Guggenheim Museum New York, New York (2017); Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs by Kadist Art Foundation (2016-2018); Juxtapoz x Superflat, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Chinese Whispers, Paul Klee Zentrum, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern (2016); Lyon Biennale (2015); Fire and Forget: On Violence, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); Shanghai Biennale (2014); Yokohama Triennale (2014); Busan Biennale (2014). His works have been collected by a number of public or private collections.

Studio Manager: Lola Fan ZHAO
Assistant to External Affairs: Ivan Chi CHANG

Berlin & Beijing