A Dreamer's Variation
Text by Xu Chongbao
Nowadays we are surrounded by cameras and photos, and in such a context we can hardly use the word “photographer” to define Liu Ren and her work. Lenses, focus and shadows are just instruments that she uses in the creative process. The most important part of this process comes when she sits in front of her computer and uses her imagination too express feelings and ideas to the extent that she melts herself with the creative process. We can call her a contemporary artist, or more technically, a photo artist.
Computer and software are the extension of her camera lenses, they are like magic hands that help her to mix real and virtual together, and they are her prop. The source of her creation is her heart from which all the images come out; she perceives people and things around her through her sensitive heart. Of course her own private world is the source for her creation. Liu Ren works are dreamy. Dream imagery is present in all of her works and we can actually call her a “dreamer”. In the world the she creates through images, everything is perfect and eternal, and this world is actually her reality. What is commonly referred to as reality, ordinary and full of regret, is no more than a mere representation of the outside world to her.
Perhaps this has something to do with her being a female artist: in most of her works we can find clouds and water, images that are symbols of tenderness, purity, freedom, they are flowing and forgiving. These elements are mixed with symbols, images and cultural patterns that are traditional and contemporary, native and foreign, real and imaginary; in Liu Ren’s works they are freely and carnival like mixed together, constantly challenging the visual observation experience and the imagination of the audience.
In the series “Perfect Life”, one of earlier works, she places her imaginary city life in the pure land of creation; the noisy chase after material possessions is inundated by misty clouds and water, with a clear taste for Zen aesthetics. In works like ‘Some Day Some Where’, ‘Memory’, ‘Us’ and ‘Heaven’ Liu Ren expresses her individualist thoughts and attitudes through photographic representation, they are like the backyard garden of her inner world.. In this backyard garden scenes and pieces of life, memories of when she was growing up, melancholy, reminiscences, commemoration of the traces of past love, and listlessness about the youth already gone all blossom like flowers. This is a private theatre; dream endows these vestiges with beauty, a glaring beauty. Private traces in Liu Ren’s works are different from the ones in works by Nan Goldin, Nobuyoshi Araki and private shoots that are part of the Chinese youth sub-culture, and this difference lies in the fact that she is representing her inner world. This inner world his her own reality, and we can see Liu Ren herself and her personality through these photos. However, these works do not bear any sense of reality, they do not represent the outside world surrounding the artist, and they are a dreamy soliloquy, a personal poetic attitude toward existence.
In more recent works, Liu Ren abandoned both her indulgence in personal feelings and her self-focused, dreamy aesthetics, and gradually turned to another way to express herself with her works: she starts to communicate trough other characters and objects. In works such as ‘Touring the Garden’, ‘Waking Up from a Dream’, ‘Dream Tour’, ‘Peony Pavilion’, ‘Seeking Dream’ appear elements of the traditional Kunqu Opera culture: characters, story lines, forms of art as well as elements that in the years have become symbols of the Chinese culture are integrated through digital photography and computer technology. In these works, Liu Ren hides herself: gardens, Kunqu Opera characters, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, pomegranates, persimmons, thermos bottles, zebras, cranes, pandas, mandarin ducks, Superman, Doraemon, rocking horses, rock musical instruments, all these subjects put the make up on and come on the stage. Liu Ren uses the Song Dynasty painting style, the “humanization of nature” freely sprinkles in her works, all the images she uses have a clear cultural and symbolic meaning, but in this new semantic setting they become blurred and intangible, and they share all kind of connections with Liu Ren’s inner world. This free spirit is the one advocated by the ancient Chinese tradition and particularly by the Taoist, who recommended a close contact with nature to the extent to abandon oneself to nature, ideals that are the antithesis of the pursuit for fame and material wealth, and instead stress on the correspondence of goodness and beauty, and even the union of heaven and human beings. In Liu Ren’s works, this free spirit is mingled with contemporary art conceptual expressive means, and creates a discourse field that is in the meantime brand-new, classic, dreamy, fashionable and authentic. In Liu Ren’s words: “As a contemporary person, this is my effort to search for an equilibrium between tradition and modernity, history and present; it is the contemporary expression of the spirit of traditional culture.”
In the Peony Pavilion series her yearn for perfect love and feminine long for romance are expressed through the timeless love story between Liu Mengmei and Du Liniang. Liu Ren hides herself, and a new layer is put between her inner world and the audience. A bubble protects the sacred love enshrined deep in her heart and her innermost feelings, and expresses a beautiful sadness and helplessness, otherwise indescribable.
In the series “Seeking Dream”, the dream turns cold: the longing for love, the passion give way to a cold, surreal reality. Is this a sweeter fantasy? From the exuberant “fake” reality of ‘Dream Tour’ to the cold and unpredictable reality of ‘Seeking Dream’, Liu Ren has perfected her skills in the manipulation and distortion of reality, and the artistic conception that states‘A flower is not a flower, and haze not haze alike’ is fully expressed in her ‘Seeking Dream’.
Liu Ren keeps reminding us that everything we see is just a representation.
