Staged Evanescence
Photography by RongRong & inri ( de )
Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin | Beijing, 2006
An almost spiritual thoughtfulness exudes from the black and white photo series of the artist team Rong Rong (born in 1968) and inri (born in 1973). Photography is not used by these artists for documentary purposes, let alone for social critique. On the one hand, they are meticulously staged shots in a nature that is colored in an exaggerated, alienating way. At the same time, sites which find their way before the camera, because of traces of decay, have a staged quality.
RongRong and inri do not work with digital techniques. Hand-made prints on slightly wavy barite paper are later often colored with dissonant colors. The individual photograph is thus a unique artwork: the line separating photograph and painting blurs.
In the Great Wall is a homage to the beauty of nature, but also to the human body. While Chinese landscape painting pays extremely little attention to the human figure, and the representation of erotic scenes was taboo in past eras, RongRong and inri make a clear break with this past. The landscape serves as an inspiring surrounding for erotic frolicking, their own passion and the effect of untouched nature that inspires it become an artistic theme. In Bad Goisern (2001) goes a step further: the wave-like contours of the backs, like hills, become an integrated part of nature in a scenario of snow and clouds.
In the concept of the sublime, wonder and horror join in face of overwhelming beauty of nature. The sixteen-part series of photographs Fujisan, Japan (2001) shows RongRong & inri in the freezing cold and thick snow at the foot of Mt. Fuji in Japan. As the most intensive form of encountering nature, the artists walk naked over a frozen lake. The mountain becomes almost invisible in a background, hidden by fog. The intervals of the automatic release determine the snapshots of the performance that transgresses the pain threshold. In the evening, the fog disperses and the mountain with its soft contours determines the proportions of the images anew. RongRong & inri now appear as tiny decorative figures in a sublimely beautiful landscape.
The series of photographse We are here (2002) was made at Beijing’s 798 Factory, now an art center. The broad landscapes are now replaced by scenarios marked by decay. Traces of destruction, relics of once functioning tools involuntarily become aesthetic backdrops for artistic interventions. Neither the prior history of the site nor its future are of interest here. What is staged here is only the present, the pleasure of physical presence in a place robbed of all function.
First published: Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin | Beijing
