If we admit that German contemporary photographer Andreas Gursky has reframed the world of images through digital technology, then we must acknowledge that via the same means, He Xingyou has reconstructed our visual perception.

The main objects He Xingyou presented in Landscape series were various building sites throughout mainland China. Here, two great forces——both human labor and the nature fiercely competed with each other, like what would happen in a cruel battle. Different from Gursky’s balanced, homogeneous, geometrical and abstract aesthetic ideas, He Xingyou put more focus on the wholeness of those sites, or in other words, the concreteness the objects. And unlike Gursky’s montage which changed the original scenes, He likes to use full-length shots to present lively scenes; he would gaze at them until he found something beyond.
Thus, He Xingyou’s works carry a diagnostic significance of both social morphology and historical archeology.

*image (left)
Gafbage ofcheyuan new district, 2013
390×160cm
© He Xingyou
courtesy of the artist