CHENG RAN, Anonymity, or Imitation and Imagining of Man Ray’s Tears, 2010, Single channel video with sound, 11 min 33 sec
Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
March 3rd through April 3rd, 2012
Cheng Ran is featured in a group exhibition at Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Entitled “Becoming Peninsula I: Symptoms”, the exhibition surveys the artistic practices of young Chinese artists born around the early 1980s.
“Anonymity, or Imitation and Imagining of Man Ray’s ‘Tears’ (1930-1932)” the work on view is a video Cheng Ran produced in memory of the late British designer Alexander McQueen. Through alternating Vivaldi music and the repetitive sound of gentle waves lapping the shore, the video starts with a long shot observing—in a fashion reminiscent of Luchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice”—a scantily clad boy standing statue-like on a rock and winds up with a close-up of the boy’s face dotted with fake pearls appropriated from the teardrops in Man Ray’s photograph “Tears”.
The video was commissioned for “Alex: A Tribute to Alexander McQueen”, a group exhibition curated by Leo Xu (James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai, 2010), and later exhibited in the show “In A Perfect World…” curated by James Elaine (Meulensteen, New York, 2011).
Cheng Ran (b. 1981) is an active figure among China’s young generation of video and media artists. Cheng’s video breaks away from the anticipated depiction of contemporary life and social change in China, and delves into a theatre where the cinematic, poetic and mysterious intertwine. Music, youth culture, and 20th century’s art house cinema are the inspiration and have been haunting the artist’s videos and installations.
Cheng’s work has been included in many significant exhibitions in China and abroad, such as “Moving Image in China: 1988-2011”(Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2011), “Farewell to Post-colonialism: The Third Guangzhou Triennial” (Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou, 2008), “Immersion and Distance” (solo, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2009), “Yi Pai – Century Thinking” (curated by Gao Minglu, Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2009), “The Tell-tale Heart” (James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai and New York, 2010-2011), etc.
For more information on Cheng Ran, please visit the artist page: http://leoxuprojects.com/?page_id=260 .
For press inquires, please contact the gallery info@leoxuprojects.com or phone: +86-21-3461 1245.
