Fangfang Ren
Fangfang Ren is a Chinese-American artist living and working in Queens, New York. Educated in painting and drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, her surreal and chaotic drawings belie a practiced hand and deliberate composition. Such skills shine through in the small gestures and moments of emotion, as each face is so cunningly rendered with the simplest lines. Born a second-generation immigrant, Ren has in many ways had an authentic American experience: living between multiple cultures and navigating different ways of life.
Her Chinese-American background informs her work, with split identities and multifaceted people being represented literally in many of her drawings. She does not shy away from the macabre, with the contorting figures of her works imparting some sense of existential dread. Yet Ren also finds humor in the absurdity of the universe; many of her pieces could be interpreted as body horror if not for the self-aware comedy in such fantastical situations. Looking beyond the edges of the human body and experience, Fangfang Ren gazes into the void, and winks.
