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Son and Bitch (signed - last copy)

by Ren Hang

Photographs: Ran Hang

Publisher: selfpublished

129 pages

Pictures: 140 (color)

Year: 2013

ISBN: 978-986-88864-1-4

Comments: Softcover in clamshell box, 21 x 28,5 cm

The fourth and most ambitious yet of Ren Hang’s self-published books presents new selections of the artist’s now-infamous photography, which explores in raw and often disturbing detail issues of gender, fetishism and sexuality. Part performance and part carefully posed floor show Ren’s confrontational and provocative works tread a delicate line between art and pornography in which friends and lovers are shown in explicit poses and fetishist contortions. Unsurprisingly his images have stirred controversy in China where they have faced criticism for being obscene and vulgar. Yet for all the criticism Ren Hang remains one of the most uncompromising and unflinching of China's new generation artists working today.

Ren Hang 任航 (b.1987) is from Chang Chun City in Jilin province in northern China. From 2007 to 2010 he attended the Communications University of China in Beijing and while still a student founded the online magazine Moon. His photography has been shown at numerous exhibitions both in China and overseas including most recently New Photography Since 2009 at Wuhan Art Museum (2014), Farewell to Experience at the 2013 Lianzhou International Photography Festival, Fuck Off 2 (2013) at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands and Remote Places, Close Spaces at Street Level Photoworks (2013) in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2010 he was a winner of the Terna 03 Contemporary Art Prize (2010) in Rome. He lives in Beijing.