Ren Hang - At Work 在上班

Ren Hang’s work defies the conventions of both life and photography in a way that feels more like an existential plunge into the unknown. Ren Hang at Work by Peter Coeln  (b. 1954, Austria), published a decade after the artist’s Wild photobook, presents a raw and hauntingly intimate portrayal of the artist at work.

Hang and Coeln met each other on the occasion of the artist’s largest solo show on March 18, 2015, at OstLicht, the Photo Gallery in Vienna. Apart from organizing this show, Coeln also assisted him with a shoot that he wanted to make in the city. Out of a hundred responses to the model open call on social media, Hang chose three—two Chinese men and one woman. For his location, he picked to work in a forest and at a small river close by to the city. When Coeln was asked to accompany the photographer on his shoot, he was surprised as he knew that Hang never accepted being photographed when at work. Coeln became the “fly on the wall” during this shoot and captured over 300 backstage photographs which served as the basis for this photobook.

Ren Hang, a figure whose work straddles the surreal and the visceral, is exposed here in a way that feels almost as vulnerable as the nudes he so famously photographed. Yet, there’s a quiet dignity in this exposure, a reminder that the process of creating is, itself, a form of self-dissection. We’ve often only seen the finality of Ren Hang’s images, but Coeln’s lens gifts us something rawer, perhaps more real: Ren Hang, the artist in the process of making.

The book’s structure, with its open thread stitching and foil embossing, mirrors this fragility. We are forced to peel back layers—folds of paper, intimate snapshots—to get closer to understanding the enigma of an artist who danced on the edge of sanity and madness. The forest, where many of the photos in this book were taken, becomes a living metaphor for that abyss. Nature here isn’t a backdrop but a symbol of resurrection, as Voltaire once proclaimed, “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.” Through Coeln’s camera, Ren Hang’s brief fragments of life in Vienna are reborn—his laughter, his sadness, the naked bodies contorted against the backdrop of the Wienerwald, all conjure up a world that feels simultaneously liberated and suffocated.

The book’s structure, with its open thread stitching and foil embossing, mirrors this fragility. We are forced to peel back layers—folds of paper, intimate snapshots—to get closer to understanding the enigma of an artist who danced on the edge of sanity and madness. The forest, where many of the photos in this book were taken, becomes a living metaphor for that abyss. Nature here isn’t a backdrop but a symbol of resurrection, as Voltaire once proclaimed, “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.” Through Coeln’s camera, Ren Hang’s brief fragments of life in Vienna are reborn—his laughter, his sadness, the naked bodies contorted against the backdrop of the Wienerwald, all conjure up a world that feels simultaneously liberated and suffocated.


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Language: English
First Edition 2024
ISBN: 978-3-946099-36-9
Format: Hardback | 96 pages
Dimensions: 150 x 240mm | 430g