Ren Hang has been arrested while taking photographs four times in China, and a couple more abroad. Sometimes, he just receives a warning from the police and other times he's taken away in a police vehicle.
Once, when he thought he had found a secluded lake, the police arrived, responding to a telephone call by a resident in a nearby high-rise. Ren Hang was barefoot — earlier, a dog ran away with his slippers in its mouth — and the naked models he had been taking photos of were far away from shore. He grabbed the rolls of film and hid them in the model's shoes and pockets before the police took away his camera. They arrested him, but not his models.
His exhibition "HIDE", curated by agency and production company MoST Artists in collaboration with Soy Sauce Factory, features glossy photographs of naked girls with red lips and red nails, contorting themselves, sitting on the edge of a windowsill, intertwined with one another, intertwined with birds, holding a fish. There is nothing to hide.
Ren Hang, 27, began taking photos in 2008. His friends stripped for him. His subjects, both male and female, are beautiful. "Like me," he says. The only overweight person he ever shot was his mother. "She was ready to get naked for me, but I wasn't ready for it."
He became more widely recognised after participating in an exhibition "F*CK Off 2" (a sequel), curated by Ai Wei Wei in the Netherlands last year. The show was created to shock and outrage the Chinese government and its strict censorship laws, with erotic radicalism acting as a form of political radicalism. Ever since, models have flocked to him and Ren Hang's works have been exhibited all over the world
Ren Hang's vision hasn't changed much over the years. Being banned in China is his brand and it's hard to look at the photographs without considering the trope of youthful rebellion against the authorities, though he says that's not the point of his work. In person he is terse, though very polite. He celebrates the beauty of the naked body, but one notices that there is only one body type in his pictures: the models are skinny and flawless. Most of the women have long shiny black hair.
The photographs in the Bangkok exhibition are more tame compared to the rest of his body of works. The immediate impression of "HIDE" is a cross between American Apparel ads and the works of Ryan McGinley — the models have perfected the fashionably blase look.
Ren Hang doesn't plan before a shoot, but he controls every detail in the photographs. He tells the models how to pose and no one opines on what he should do. Since the models seek him out, he has no problem getting them to feel comfortable in their own skin. He often introduces live animals to the set, from a lizard, to a snake, to an octopus. The models may be touching, wrapped around each other, but they are disconnected. The sexualised body so controlled, so carefully curated rather than spontaneous, that the resulting images are detached from sex.
Ren arranges the human body, almost as a prop, to create intriguing landscapes. The models themselves lose their identity and personality when they lose their clothes. He has sculpted unfamiliar shapes from the familiar body.
He continues to photograph in private and public, despite his run-ins with authorities. He prepares a coat now, in case he needs to clothe the model quickly. Always in retrospect, he realises the physical danger sometimes imposed upon the models.
A model may be perched on a windowsill of a high-rise building or lying on the edge of a slanting roof. He and his models often get cut up, frolicking in tall grass, stuck in urban decay. No one is ever smiling in the images; the standard look is that of bored teenagers. But some of the photos on display for the "HIDE" exhibition will make you chuckle, much like watching an awkward sex scene on TV and your parents walk in, like in a picture showing a woman sticking her head out between the waist curves of two other women, her face completely deadpan.
Some of Ren's more risqué photographs are missing from the exhibition at Soy Sauce Factory on Charoen Krung Road, including a man performing oral sex as an acrobatic feat, a woman smoking a cigarette from her vagina, and a man peeing into a tulip. Ren insists he doesn't have a pee fetish, but when his models have to urinate, he simply tells them to go ahead, while he keeps shooting. A session can be 10 minutes or 10 hours long.
Do people have sex during the shoot? "Sometimes, a little bit," he answers.
"HIDE" is on view at Soy Sauce Factory, Charoen Krung 24, until Jan 7th. Visit www.facebook.com/soysaucefactory
