What happens when an artist partner who has lived together for nearly two decades puts each other's work in the same space for the first time? Stepping into a solo exhibition by LIU Ren and ZHANG Ruyi at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, “Everything is on time, only time was never ours.” The answer almost came to my face.
In ZHANG Ruyi's work, you will see many familiar elements - cacti, concrete, bathroom leaky, tiles, plastic film, steel... The most common and neglected elements of urban life have been reorganized. She was never talking about the materials themselves, but about the repression, movement, stagnation, and unspoken perceptions and emotions of the individual in modern cities. LIU Ren kept embedding language and ideas in everyday objects: repeatedly writing English words in egg shells, placing apples above fish hooks, and printing "ocean," Time Magazine and U.S. dollars on grass paper. He was a man who wrote philosophy into everyday objects.
LIU Ren and ZHANG Ruyi are both born after 1980, and are one of the strongest forces in contemporary Chinese art. The two grew up together in Shanghai and both graduated from the School of Fine Arts of Shanghai University in printmaking. Although they had similar backgrounds, they developed very different creative languages. For nearly two decades, they have created independently.
"We were a little unable to start this double exhibition at first." Artist ZHANG Ruyi told us, "After constantly thinking and organizing over 20 years of work, we found a more appropriate entry point in the space." At the beginning of the project, we went to the exhibition hall and the studio where the two artists shared a chat.
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