Ren Zhe

Ren Zhe was born in 1983 and was predominantly inspired by the 1990s. Art in the 1990s was defined at the beginning of the decade by a group of artists in the United Kingdom that came to be known as the YBAs, or Young British Artists. They were a diverse collective of creatives, affiliated loosely by their age, nationality, and their association with Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art in London, as well as being favoured by super collector of the time Charles Saatchi. The most famous artist of the group is Damien Hirst, who was also an early organiser of group activities. Other members included Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Sarah Lucas and Sam Taylor-Wood. Much of their work became known for shock tactics and the sensationalism of both material and message. They also became famed for their use of throwaway materials, wild-living, and an attitude that was simultaneously counter-culture rebellion but also entrepreneurial. They achieved considerable amount of media coverage and dominated British art during the decade. Their international shows in the mid-1990s included the now legendary ‘Sensation'. Also gaining prominence at this time was a developing trend in Japan related to the huge boom in advertising and consumerism that took place during the economic dominance of the 1980s. The indigenous comic book culture of manga, allied to trends in advertising, graphic design and packaging, saw a young artist called Takashi Murakami develop his theories which he coined ’Superflat’. Influenced by his experiences in New York City in the mid-1990s, Murakami formed a powerful group called Kaikaikiki, which became internationally renowned as an artistic group. Conceptual photography led by German ideas and artists came to prominence. Artists like Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Wolfgang Tillmans gained major recognition, and inspired other artists such as the Canadian Jeff Wall, who experimented with the kind of cinematic expansiveness associated with the German artists’ work. Painters like Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger exercised a notable influence on younger artists. Relational Aesthetics became a key idea. It was a term coined by curator Nicholas Bourriaud in the 1990s to describe the tendency to make art based on, or inspired by, human relations and their social context. Works by artists like Douglas Gordon, Gillian Wearing, Philippe Parenno and Liam Gillick were described as important artists who worked to this outline. A proliferation of trends characterised the decade, including the highly derisive sculpture of Maurizio Cattelan, and highly sensitive advancements of conceptualism as shown in the work of artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres.