REN HANG "New Love"

New Love
Photography by Ren Hang

First edition. Numbered to 500.
56 pages
A4 size
Hardcover, cloth bound book
Session Press, 2015
New York City, USA
ISBN 978-0-692-42135-2

The Book
NEW LOVE, the first official US monograph by Ren Hang, one of China’s most distinguished emerging photographers. NEW LOVE presents Hang’s most recent photographs, taken in February of this year during his first visit to New York City. It is published on the occasion of Hang’s upcoming exhibition “NEW LOVE,” to be held June 19 through July 25 at matchbaco gallery in Tokyo, Japan.

Hang’s work in NEW LOVE includes casual snap shots taken of friends in parks, cafés, streets, and apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan, smartly blended with the striking nude photos he is becoming increasingly renowned for. Hang is highly censored by the authorities in China, and the opportunity to work in New York City brought a more relaxed and playful energy to his photographs, and gave his abundant creativity new avenues of expression. As a result, both the diaristic pictures and the stylized nudes in NEW LOVE are imbued with an undeniable sense of discovery and joy, and thrillingly document one of contemporary photography’s most exciting young artists taking bold advantage of the new and unfamiliar.

The Artist
Born in 1987 in Chang Chun, Jilin province in Northeastern China, Ren Hang is a photographer and poet.
His work is deliberately provocative and explicit, sometimes it is too much for the artist’s homeland where the highly conservative society and its conventional codes in art and communication do not gladly accept Ren Hang’s work and of other young artists who are the new generation of the Chinese cultural reawakening. Ren Hang has been invited by artist Ai Weiwei for the group exhibition “Fuck Off” in The Netherlands showcasing the new wave of the 21st century Chinese art scene.
Ren Hang’s work has banned in many galleries in China. Despite this, he has been exhibited widely in Russia, Italy, France, Sweden, United Kingdom, Austria and China as well.
He has already published four monograph books.
Ren Hang lives and works in Beijing.