Chinese artist Ren Hang Receives 2016 Outset | Unseen Exhibition Fund at Unseen


At Unseen Photo Fair, a curatorial committee comprising Alona Pardo (1974, curator Barbican Art Gallery, London), Carolyn H. Drake (1985, independent curator, Director at A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam) and Thomas Dukes (1984, curator Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool) selected Ren Hang to present a solo exhibition at Foam at the beginning of 2017.
Originally from Chang Chun in the Jilin province of Northeastern China, Ren Hang is a poet and photographer living and working in Beijing.
Deliberately provocative, Ren Hang’s images challenge conventional codes of morality in a still highly conservative society.
The artist’s work has appeared in leading independent magazines in China and around the world.
The explicit nature of Ren Hang’s photography has often made it difficult for galleries in his homeland to mount exhibitions of his work.
Despite this, his images have been exhibited widely; with several solo shows in China and appearances in numerous group shows internationally in countries including Italy, France, Russia, Israel and Sweden.
The jury said: “Employing the language of fashion photography, Ren Hang’s irreverent and playfully sexual compositions create new sculptural forms using the body.
“The curatorial committee are impressed by the consistent quality and sophistication across his practice and within each image.”
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Tom Seymour

Tom Seymour is an Associate Editor at The Art Newspaper and an Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication. His words have been published in The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, Financial Times, Wallpaper* and The Telegraph. He has won Writer of the Year and Specialist Writer of the year on three separate occassions at the PPA Awards for his work with The Royal Photographic Society.