Yellow Book
He Xiangyu
Editor: HATJE CANTZ
Date: 2017
黄
皮
书
Conceptual artist He Xiangyu (*1986, China) has developed projects that take as their subject the goods and products that symbolize the mass production and consumption of the world while evoking the state of contemporary Chinese society. For his Coca-Cola Project, (2009 – 2012), the artist spent over a year simmering down a 127-ton batch of Coca- Cola, and transformed the black, charcoal-like substance that was extracted from this process into an apocalyptic installation.
The Lemon Project, started in 2016, turns towards the practice of scientific research to produce an encyclopedic collection of the multitude of meanings and functions of lemons and the color yellow, leading him to immerse himself in the abyss of historical, psychological, medical, and cultural meanings associated with the color yellow. “The Yellow book” includes essays on the color yellow. On the inside of the uncut pages are more than 500 of He Xiangyu`s drawings entitled “Research on Yellow.”