Black and Red?A journey through memory —— Unscramble “Door scenery” Series from Ren Hui

This exhibition is showing a Young artist Ren Hui’ｓ work —“Door scenery” Series No.2. In these works Ren Hui not only recorded her hometown door faithfully, but also gave them more meaning and sentimentality. For me, these works not only showing us the artist’s recall, but it is a torture for the past, or a "independence language" through the memory...

Ren Hui said that these works are a group of photograph that she took from her hometown in 2009, based on that she turned them into artworks. These doors from her works, not the general sense of the door, but the door she grew up with in daily life, so you can say those doors constitute a unique memory of the lives of the "the door from hometown". Perhaps it was based on this, those "old photos" as the "clear", and "simple", "black and white," the old cave and the old locust trees, in the people less environment it seems still has many past or present or future unknown events will be happen`````` Those word "red" is the red from the couplets during Spring Festival—This kind red suppose to express fun, joy and happiness, but in front of us it’s an entirely different story—full of infinite sadness of life! In my opinion, the "black" and "red" just works constitute the most important color elements of Ren Hui’s works, the hometown door in this kind of "black and red" will be not only her life experience, or individual reflection, the deeper the surface, seems to reflect the strangers through the 1970's reflected the collective life. In fact, through her works we can see more significance than the idea of the artist herself, or even a "literary type" of lyric.

In fact there’s another thing has caught my attention too, that is the media she uses, many of her works are hand-painted directly on the film of water-soluble film color, on the one hand with the photographic record of history in the form truthfully, while the other side approach to hand coloring of these records, to re-create! To give her works new meaning is a part of how we interpret her works. It seems to reveal and face the already vague historical memory, we tend to try to choose the memory to make it clear, but a lot of information will be active forgotten. I think this maybe a kind of information Ren Hui tried to passed to us.

Let’s look at the theme of her works — "hometown door," "door" in a sense a symbol of a beginning, an end, or whether a unknown reincarnation. It exists in our life from morning till evening, but we still can not see it, so Ren Hui is trying to face it to show her spiritual dimension present and asks everyone’s heart to the audience. The door in her "black and red" steeped in the spiritual world presents us with such a journey through the memory, and the door is not only Ren Hui’s individual unique record of life experiences, but also a life reflection for each of us who is pressed for time on a journey. I think this is precisely the meaning of Ren Hui’s works``````

Ge Yujun July,2011 from China Academy of Art