Zhou Tiehai was born in Shanghai in 1966. His works have been exhibited in the number of internationally renowned art institutions, such as the Whitney Museum of Art New York, Deichtorhallen Hamburg Germany, Rotterdam Museum of Art Netherlands, Shanghai Art Museum and Hamburger Bahnhor-Museum Fur Gegenwartskunst. He also participated in several important international exhibitions including the 48th Venice Biennale, the 5th Shanghai Biennale and the 4th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.

Chinese artists in the 1990s were a closed group. While Chinese artists emulated the West, they were not quite accepted by the Western world, On one hand, Chinese artists did not travel abroad; on the other, when Western journalists came to China, they already had a pre-determined judgment and view on the artworks,  As a result, Chinese artists were unable to truly convey the meaning and interpretation of their artworks to the West. Zhou Tiehai created a series of woks "Solomon has come to China"(1994), "My works have to be packed with Louis Vuitton bag" to reflect the two major phenomena in the Chinese contemporary art scenes: an increasing number of Chinese artists possess strong desire to succeed and speculative mentality towards their works, And an artist can be successful only if he is spotted by an international curator. His "cover" series (from 1995 on) were some of the most important western news and arts magazines covers created by him. Newsweek, Art in America, FlachArt, Mirror... Zhou Tiehai often appeared on the cover of these publications alongside his works, making him a major star.

Camel image is the most well-known image of Zhou Tiehai, the camel series include "We went looking for love", "You alone", "procure happiness", "Rightist makes leftist happy?", and "Headache, airline tickets come again". He proves that art creation is a very simple matter, whether is traditional Chinese paintings or Western classical masterpieces, commercial posters, or portraits. Not to mention the iconic "M. Camel" who is often depicted in the well-known paintings by Durer, Goethe and Ingres to express the ironic sense of humor. He does not paint, and he aims to express his ideas by using someone else's technical skills. As a result, he has been called a conceptual artist of the most metaphysical sense in China.

If one thinks "Placebo" represents the culture exchange between the East and West. "Tonic" represents the Chinese traditional culture. And "Dessert" is an artistic creation using all possible clever approaches in pastry making. It has a great mixture of various mediums including text, photography, and paintings. Most of all, it is a creative, festive and pleasant cake feast.