Yunfei Ren (“yoon-fay”, he/him) works across painting, installation, and photography, constructing temporal portals that collapse the boundaries between past and present. His practice engages with history, memory, and migration, mapping cycles of movement, transformation, and recurrence. By layering images and materials, Ren’s work traces how memory lingers and histories resurface, echoing across time. His work has been exhibited at Fort Mason, the de Young Museum, Stanford University, and the Chinese Historical Society Museum, and has also been featured in The Washington Post.
LATITUDE UNKNOWN
These seven paintings chart shifting geographies of movement, where migration is not a singular event but an ongoing state of transformation. These works function as temporal portals, drawing from the visions of migrants during their voyages—sun, stars, wind, coasts, and waters—inviting viewers into spaces where past and present blur.
As spaces of convergence, these paintings embrace the instability of perception, allowing meaning to shift with each encounter. Forms emerge and recede, echoing the fragmentary nature of memory and the fluidity of migration. Latitude Unknown lingers with these tensions, inviting viewers to step into the visions of Ren’s paintings—histories both personal and collective that continue to accumulate sedimented meanings with time.
As spaces of convergence, these paintings embrace the instability of perception, allowing meaning to shift with each encounter. Forms emerge and recede, echoing the fragmentary nature of memory and the fluidity of migration. Latitude Unknown lingers with these tensions, inviting viewers to step into the visions of Ren’s paintings—histories both personal and collective that continue to accumulate sedimented meanings with time.
On view April 18 - May 31, 2025 at
Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery
When One Shadow Touches Another, 2025Acrylic on canvas
40 × 60 in
The Sun Bends Twice, 2025
Acrylic, flashe on canvas
48 × 36 in
Stars Return in Fragments, 2025
Acrylic, flashe on canvas
48 × 36 in
A Map Drawn in Wind , 2025
Acrylic and flashe on canvas
48 x 36 in
A Chorus of Departures, 2025
Acrylic on canvas
35 x 30 in
Torn at the Seam of Arrival, 2025
Acrylic, flashe on canvas
35 x 30 in
Scorched Into Memory, 2025
Acrylic, flashe, mica on canvas
36 x 22.5 in
hub/spoke
hub/spoke maps the trajectories of migration, reflecting the emotional and psychological transformations individuals experience as they navigate new cultures and environments. The intricate web of paths reveals a subtle interplay between global mobility and the evolving contours of personal identity. This visual mapping invites contemplation on the transient and cyclical nature of selfhood, reflecting the broader, cyclical patterns of migration, where the movement of bodies and the reformation of identity are forever entwined in a process of constant negotiation, regeneration, and flux.
Photograph: 50 x 50 in | Inkjet print
Installation: 9 x 9 ft | Threads, golden nails
Installation: 9 x 9 ft | Threads, golden nails
Photograph:
Installation detail views:
Yunfei Ren | All Rights Reserved