Gallery

Between the real and the surreal

Works by Liu Ren

Oct 2008 - Apr 2009

The pressures of life often make one reminisce about the wonderful past, returning to the boundless, naive and colorful childhood. It’s possible in that moment to escape from a tangled reality, allowing the soul to attain a momentary freedom and calmness with one’s imagination. Or, one can use dreams to solve actual problems with surrealism in order to resist the pressures of reality.

Works by the artist Liu Ren are tuned in with her dreams; in her dreams, the ocean often washes up on the shore. Growing up in the coastal city of Qingdao, the ocean accompanied her childhood. In earlier works like Memory 01, the ocean quietly creeps up to the oak fores, and many eyes calmly watch all that is happening. The unified focus of these eyes tells us about some unknown event, making us somewhat nervous, doubtful. Later, the ocean further devoured Liu Ren’s actual living place. In Someday Somewhere 01, the square in front of the train station became the new beach; Beijing station was still lit, but it already returned to the not so distant ocean. In her dream, Liu Ren was at home wearing a nightgown that transformed her into a fairy, riding on rainbow colored bubbles, floating above the beach, enjoying her surroundings, looking over onto the self on the beach and feeling happy and free.

In Someday Somewhere 07, there are tumbling dark clouds, catastrophe appears imminent, Beijing is experiencing a tsunami. The school she was attending - Huajiadi - is being reluctantly devoured by the ocean, like a Hollywood movie, unprepared people are being forced into the experience, the artwork provides you with in exhaustible space for the imagination. In another work, Someday Somewhere 04, there is no longer the surging ocean, a few girls in the image of Liu Ren and looking like they’ve come from a fairy tale circle around and accompany each other, waiting for the long expected horse carriage from the heavenly kingdom. They long, they look afar...

Fore more:

Liu Ren -Mandarine List.pdf

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