Athens Love
Ren Hang
Session Press
Hardcover
68 pages
210×297 mm
2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-63068-6
All images shot in Athens and Attica in April 2015 during Ren Hang’s participation in the Occupy Atopos artist residency and exhibition curated by Vassilis Zidianakis.
Following his first book New Love in 2015 by Session Press, we are pleased to announce Athens Love, the second monograph by Ren Hang, one of China’s most distinguished and controversial emerging photographers. Athens Love presents Hang’s works taken in Greece in April 2015 during his participation in the Occupy Atopos artist residency and exhibition. Athens Love is published on the occasion of the exhibition “Athens Love” at Klein Sun Gallery in New York from March 24 to April 30, 2016.
Hang’s work in Athens Love includes casual snap shots taken of friends in various locations in Athens and Attica, Greece, such as the beach, woods, cliffs, streets, and apartments. Expressing his awe of the dynamics in nature, Hang responds to it in high spirits, his sense of humor reflecting in the composition and colors of his work. Away from his more politically strict and constraining home in China, Hang enjoys the more relaxed and playful energy in his photographs, and renders his abundant creativity in new avenues of expression. As a result, both the diaristic pictures and the stylized nudes in Athens Love are imbued with an undeniable sense of discovery and joy, and thrillingly document one of contemporary photography’s most exciting young artists taking bold advantage of the new and unfamiliar.
Based in Beijing, China, Ren Hang (born 1987) is highly recognised for both his fine art and commercial photography. Exhibited around the world, his photographs are in numerous private and public collections, including those of the Kansas State University Art Museum in the United States and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, Russia, as well as the CAFA Art Museum and ThreeShadows Photography Art Centre, both in Beijing. New Love is Hang’s twelfth book of photographs and his own Poem Collection of Ren Hang.
www.renhang.org
Session Press is dedicated to introducing contemporary and historical works by both emerging and established Japanese and Chinese photographers. Founded in 2011 by Miwa Susuda, photobook consultant at Dashwood Books in NY, Session Press functions like a collective, bringing photographers, designers, writers, and editors together to produce limited edition artist books.
Video: Ren Hang – Athens Love on Vimeo.
