Jewellery & Metal (MA)
Ran Li
Ran Li is an artist, designer and maker from Chengdu, China. She holds Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design Object and Sculpture from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in the USA.
Exhibition (selected)
2020 |“Jewellery Cultural Exchange Exhibition” Sunny Art Centre, London & Tokyo
2019 |“Guan Tong” Beijing International Jewelry Art exhibition, Beijing
2019 |Team work “Erocean” at Gallery L0 JCCAC, Hong Kong
2019 |“Matter-morphosis” at Dyson Gallery, London
2019 |“One Man Band” at Horniman Museum, London
2019 |“WIP” , London
2018 |Across RCA “Sense-ability” exhibition at Lower Gulbenkian Gallery, London
2017 |“Bing Xing” Beijing International jewelry Art exhibition”, Beijing
2017 |BFA graduation show, Chicago
As a lover of reading stories about the fantastical and the strange, Ran's works draw great inspiration from the mixture of realism and otherworldly dimension in those stories.
The melting process, for her, is a kind of subtle but fundamental power. It’s persuasive, feminine and soft. When something is melting, it changes its surroundings quietly, patiently but unmistakably.
In her practice, she combines the aesthetics of melting with the pattern of deer fur, both of which fire her imagination. The idea of camouflage and the mystery of alien bodies inform her work, reflecting the surreal and absurdist quality of her own narratives.
She uses some of Western culture’s most overused imagery, such as the apple, to suggest something emotional beyond the everyday fact of their existence, as a poetic solution to the mundane and soul-destroying nature of modern life.
Melted Deer Apple Brooch — 8x6cm resin, 3d printed plaster, pastel paint, lacquer, silver 2020
Dear Deer! — 5x3cm resin, 3d printed plaster, lacquer 2019
Melted Deer Apple — 12x9cm 3d printed plaster 2019
Shiramine — 6x6cm resin, 3d printed plaster, pastel paint, lacquer, silver 2019
By creating this image of distorted deer fur pattern, I visualised the awakening and expression of my self-consciousness, projecting it upon the space, time and memories. The deer fur talks about the disguise of one’s skin and the idea of camouflage. The visual imagery of the melted form, can be seen as mysterious alien forms in my work, reflecting the surreal and absurdist quality of my own narratives.
As apple is the metaphor of the epiphany of knowledge acquisition for Newton, I used apple in my practice as the metaphor of a beginning or a start , my attempt to return to myself, to let my consciousness and emotion roam free.
I am projecting myself onto this apple. The melted apple for me, then in turn represents a state of running away from my parents’ well protection, gaining the freedom to some degree of being an individual grown-up in this society. The surreal quality of this work is a poetic way to suggest his struggle in my mental state.
Medium:
resin, 3d printed plaster, pastel paint, lacquer, silverSize:
8x6cm size various
turkey dancer necklace 1 — gold-plated brass 2020
turkey dancer necklace 1 — gold-plated brass 2020
pearl necklace 2 — silver 2020
pearl necklace 2 — silver 2020
turkey pearl earrings — 3d rendering 2020
turkey pearl earrings — 3d rendering 2020
To me, it could also be interpreted to describe the busy life of modern urban people, how it is filled with work and too little time for themselves. They feel busy pursuing the material world but the spiritual world is forgotten.
Inspired by Henri Matisse’s famous painting “Dance” in 1910. I used dancing chickens to create two necklaces which talks about this social issue in an ironic way.