Ren Hang and the Production of the Hidden Idealized Body in By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, April 2015 http://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/04/ren-hang-and-the-production-of-the-hidden-idealized-body-in- china.html

First, let it be said that this oversize production by dienacht of Ren Hang’s work is lush and beautifully crafted. The pages overlap and folds of the bodies within become further entangled in a well thought through production.

Ren Hang has made it a point to say that he is not making work that is politicized. He has been aligned with in the past and the socio-political action of uncovering years of communist censorship in producing sexually-charged Chinese bodies in his oeuvre are a direct consequence of globalization and a shift towards how Hang looks at his own desires within the system. To say that he is not politically active is a bit disingenuous within the framework of his production. It is as if to say, he wants to push the boundaries of how we look at his desire and the naked Chinese form without enmity. This seems a bit hopeful given the current mood of Chinese government suppression. To act out of one’s desire that has been purposefully cloaked under ideology is in fact a direct transgression against the state. This will likely have a further consequence to Hang’s life and work as his aesthetic and work travels globally. I would expect we will see some control apparatus to further intervene at some point. It’s easy to sit here from the west and champion his work. It is beautiful, if a bit of a one-trick pony. It could also be questioned that we are observing the hidden or unseen Chinese body with some amount of spectacle. There is almost a voyeuristic tourism involved by the western eye bound to the boom of his career.

His work, though superb owes much to the tradition of Helmut Newton and western fashion employ of the sexualized body. Within the framework of looking at his work through western eyes, I almost recall a feeling of being at a human zoo. I’m not sure what this says about the work or myself, but for the time being, it seems important that it is conducted. I do hope Hang will find the freedom to continue the creation of work.

My more sincere hope is that it evolves and enables a further communication outside that of the sexualized idealism that it currently panders to within Chinese culture. Perhaps this is also why the work should not be read as political after all as the idealized nude is something the west has been investigating for some time. We have struggled to understand our body and the ideals pushed on us through consumer culture and gender dis-equilibrium. Within Hang’s production, there is a tendency to use idealized models as his subject matter. That is not to say that it is Hang’s problem to represent the body any differently, but it is a question we should consider while viewing the spectacle of its presence.

Ren Hang's controversial photography On site for a Shanghai shoot with the young Chinese artist http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Art-Art_Features/21718/Ren-Hangs-controversial- photography.html

This article originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of Time Out Shanghai. Since the article was published, Ren Hang has gone on to shoot for numerous fashion brands, magazines and artists around the world. A selection of Ren Hang's work is currently on display as part of Minsheng Art Museum's Contemporary Photography in China 2009-2014 exhibition.

In the crumbling, half-demolished clock tower of an abandoned 19th century school building, a young man furiously unravels a reel of old audio tape that he’s just found on the floor. He attaches the aged silver wheel to a section of the wall and pulls until his hands and the floor beside him are covered. Looking around, he begins to drape the tape around a decrepit window frame and over a girl wearing a head-dress made from doll’s legs. Welcome to the world of avant garde photographer Ren Hang.

The dilapidated building is the former St Mary’s school, built in 1881 and once attended by Eileen Chang, author of Lust, Caution, but since half-demolished by developers. Given a last minute reprieve by the government, the building has been in limbo since mid-2009, half falling down and succumbing all around to creepers and urban decay. As lightning flashes across the sky outside, it makes for a hauntingly dramatic setting.

The girl with the doll’s leg head-dress, actually a home-made necklace repositioned by Ren, is San San, who together with her band Boojii and local singer Little Punk, has just scaled a wall to get into the site. After scrabbling over the brickwork under the cover of darkness, the group fight their way through overgrown weeds to get to the main school building, a mobile phone torch lighting the way. At one point, guitarist Han Han bashes some towering vegetation out of the way to clear a path. ‘No, no, no!’ shouts Ren, ‘we might need that later.’

For Ren, everything is a potential prop and there are photo opportunities everywhere. His reputation is such that the -based photographer also has an endless supply of models upon his first visit to Shanghai. Less than half an hour after stepping off a midnight flight from Chengdu, the -born photographer’s phone is buzzing with people desperate to meet him. ‘A few people have found out I’m in Shanghai so they keep calling me,’ he shrugs on the airport bus. ‘Usually I just use my friends as there aren’t many people who are willing to be shot the way I want to shoot them.’

The way he wants to shoot them is usually without their clothes on. His images of the human form – both male and female – are provocative: in one series, a girl suggestively straddles a horse; in another, an erect penis is pictured next to a hand giving the camera the finger, creating an odd symmetry; in yet another, a pretty young girl places a lit cigarette between her legs. His arresting photos drew gasps from the audience at a recent slideshow of his work at Yuyintang, yet he protests that his photos ‘contain no meaning whatsoever.’

Ren only began taking photos two years ago, but the self-taught 23 year-old’s uncompromising work has led to him becoming one of Beijing’s most in-demand photographers, with bands such as Pet Conspiracy stripping off for his magazine, Moon.

Mild-mannered and unfailingly polite in person, Ren spends nearly every waking moment of his time in Shanghai either on photo shoots or arranging them. Despite such congeniality, he is demanding behind the camera. His models are given precise orders for every positioning, from the tilt of their heads to the angles of their feet. But such demands are the manifestation of a singular vision – Ren knows exactly how he wants a photo to look and will get his subjects to contort their bodies to any angle in order to achieve it.

The results are stunning. The pains that Ren goes to in order to get his compositions how he wants them (at one point during the Boojii shoot, he adjusts individual strands of hair on Han Han’s head) create bold, striking images. And though at times it can seem like everyone in China is surgically attached to a digital SLR, Ren is steadfastly analogue. ‘I’ve always shot onto film,’ he says. ‘I prefer things to look natural and you can only get that on film.’

Ren freely admits that his work is not palatable to some however, and it’s hardly surprising that his family remain unaware of the majority of his art. ‘I’ve shown my parents some photos, the ones where people have clothes on, but they didn’t really have any strong feeling about them. They’re not against me taking photos, they just think it’s a hobby.’

He accepts that their willingness to let him indulge this ‘hobby’ would be tested were they to see the entirety of his collection however, noting that he’s experienced problems with his photos before. ‘I’ve had a few exhibitions shut down or photos removed because they’re not too harmonious. In a lot of my work you see absolutely everything,’ he says with a wave of his hand from head to foot. ‘I’m not sure how comfortable people are with that.’

For now, Ren doesn’t seem to be struggling to find people willing to pose for him however. Shortly after his slideshow at Yuyintang, he is approached by a girl who wants him to shoot her. A few minutes later she is naked and lying beside a pond in the park next door as Ren’s camera flashes away.

The next day, at St Mary’s school, Boojii and Little Punk also accede to the photographer’s demands, and shed various items of clothing, twisting their heads into antique chests of drawers and clambering around the unstable-looking building in the darkness. Back out on the road after the shoot (and a run in with a rather angry guard), Ren is satisfied. ‘That place was great,’ he grins, dousing his hands with water and brushing the dust from his jeans. ‘Really dirty, but great.’

The Art of Taboo - Ren Hang http://www.vice.com/video/the-art-of-taboo-ren-hang

Being a radical artist in China is a pretty tricky prospect. Considering censors banned paradigm of inoffensive banality Katy Perry from the country's airwaves for supposedly being too vulgar (and not forgetting that time authorities made Ai Weiwei disappear for posting seminude photos of himself online), you would have thought that Chinese photographer Ren Hang would lay off filling his portfolio with gaping buttholes and models pissing on each other, or sustaining his unparalleled level of dedication to photographing erect penises.

But he hasn't, which is a good thing, because his photos are great-somehow managing to desexualize naked bodies and turn them into sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, sometimes gnarled, hairy, human-shaped sculptures that make you want to get naked with all your friends, paint your dick red, and hang out on a roof in Beijing. Which is basically the end game all photographers are going for, right? I wanted to talk to Ren about his work, so I did. Here's that conversation.

VICE: First off, why is everyone naked in basically every single one of your photos? Ren Hang: Well, people come into this world naked and I consider naked bodies to be people's original, authentic look. So I feel the real existence of people through their naked bodies.

Is that why the bodies aren't presented in a kind of conventionally "sexy" way, even if the photos are sexual? No, I don't take photos with any particular purpose or plan-I just grasp whatever comes into my mind, arrange that in front of me and take a photo of it. I don't pay too much attention to whether a scene is sexy or not when I'm taking photos.

Yeah, a lot of the bodies end up looking more like kind of grotesque sculptures. That's not really intentional, although I do consider bodies as sculptural-or, as you say, grotesque sculptures- so I suppose the sculptures exist because the bodies exist.

Yep. What's with all the pee in your photos, too? Again, I don't use urine on purpose. The models urinate, I shoot.

OK, I can already guess the answer to this considering nothing you do seems to have a purpose, but the dicks-there are a lot of dicks. Is that a statement about patriarchy, or something, or do you just like dicks? No, taking pictures of penises is meaningless. But I do think that erect penises are the most real and beautiful penises. People sometimes even forget they have a penis unless it's erect, which I think is very powerful. But it's not just dicks I'm interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid, and emotional way.

What do you think is more beautiful-the male body or the female body? Gender isn't important when I'm taking pictures, it only matters to me when I'm having sex.

What's your opinion on sex? Do you think it's a big deal? Yeah, I do think sex is important, but I don't emphasize its importance all the time. After all, sex is a part of a normal, healthy life, just like eating and sleeping.

True. Who are all the models? Your friends? Yeah, most of the models are my friends. I like shooting my friends because they trust me, which makes me feel more relaxed. I can only take my best work when I'm in that state; being with total strangers makes me nervous. How choreographed is each photo? I don't plan before shooting. Inspiration usually comes to me while I'm holding the camera and looking at the models. I don't take pre-planned, previously realized photographs, I just shoot, you know? Although most of the time models follow my ideas instead of acting stuff out themselves, so I suppose that is choreographing to an extent.

How have your photos gone down in China? My photos, especially the ones of naked bodies, are forbidden to be shown in Chinese galleries. Only occasionally can the ones that aren't explicit be shown, but I still face many difficulties even with them. For example, one of my shows was canceled by the Chinese government on "suspicion of sex" and, another time, a visitor spat at one of my photos. And those are just a couple of examples of the problems I've had. None of China's press will publish my books and I've been arrested while shooting photos outside before.

Doesn't that get frustrating? Well, I'm used to those kinds of situations now. And I love China and I like shooting Chinese people. I was born here and I feel a big connection with my hometown. True, I'm restricted here, but the more I'm limited by my country, the more I want my country to take me in and accept me for who I am and what I do.

Interview by Jamie Clifton.

Purple Magazine — S/S 2014 issue 21: Introducing the World of Ren Hang http://purple.fr/article/introducing-the-world-of-ren-hang/

At 26, Ren Hang has already published six photography books, continually trumping conservative Chinese culture with his use of the nude. In a country where censorship extends to all aspects of life, Ren brings a dose of innocence to the task of irreverently awakening Chinese sexuality.

YANYAN HUANG — What did you start photographing first? REN HANG — Everything I saw around me. Friends, nature, places. I’m still photographing these things now.

YANYAN HUANG — Do you look to Western or Eastern culture for inspiration? REN HANG — Mostly Chinese culture.

YANYAN HUANG — Which artists are you looking at these days? REN HANG — My favorite one is the Japanese avant-garde director and photographer Shuji Terayama. He studied with Nobuyoshi Araki.

YANYAN HUANG — What kind of cameras do you like to use? REN HANG — I use multiple versions of a Minolta 35 mm film camera. Though I’ve experimented with all kinds of cameras, this model is my favorite. I found it through friends, who told me it was easy to use. I have five, since I break them easily.

YANYAN HUANG — How do you like living in Beijing? REN HANG — I live here because I went to school here, and since graduating I’ve just stayed. I like to see rock shows at little venues like Yugong Yishan and D22.

YANYAN HUANG — What are you working on now? REN HANG — I’ll be going to in January to exhibit some work. Also, I’ll be photographing on set for the writer Ming Ming’s upcoming film. YANYAN HUANG — Is it hard to be a photographer in China? REN HANG — No, it’s rather easy, but it is very difficult to shoot nudes in China. People are more bound by traditional and conservative attitudes toward the body. They think it’s a degradation, even a demoralization, to show what they think should be private. They generally abhor nudity here. We hide the body in our culture. In China, people will tell the government to shut down art and photography shows if there’s nudity. If you put nudes online, they don’t care about the composition, beauty, lighting, or artistic tradition — all they care about is that it’s a nude body and should not be seen.

YANYAN HUANG — What draws you to the body? REN HANG — I don’t really have an explanation. The way I see it, bodies are pre-existing regardless of whether I photograph them or not. They’re also part of the natural world.

YANYAN HUANG — Since depicting nudes isn’t acceptable in Chinese culture, how did you begin shooting them? REN HANG — I started shooting nudes only accidentally. In school, we were living in cramped dorm rooms of four people, so I would frequently see my roommates in the nude. It was a natural and easy subject because I was shooting everything anyway.

YANYAN HUANG — How do you construct a photo shoot REN HANG — It’s spontaneous for me. I don’t plan shoots, and I take photos whenever I feel like it. It’s like satisfying a thirst. I wait for natural moments of beauty, almost like stumbling upon them. I wait for ideas and plans that I’ve collected in my head to appear in reality.

YANYAN HUANG — Though your photos have a lot of sexual elements, they still seem quite innocent. Does this innocence reflect your relationship with your subjects? REN HANG — My models are all my friends. I haven’t photographed people actually having sex, but my friends trust me to use them as pliable tools. My friends are my collaborators. They trust me to control them and they submit willingly. Through my photos I would like people to have fantasies, to be seduced into conjuring up their personal sexual experiences.

YANYAN HUANG — What seduces you? REN HANG — Everything. If I want to think about sex, everything will conjure up a sexual thought.