Artist Uses Bees to Build Honeycomb Sculptures

Beijing-based artist Ren Ri has an unusual team of collaborators: bees. At Pearl Lam Gallery's newly opened Hong Kong location, Ri’s surreal beeswax structures have taken over the first floor and ground floor spaces. His first major showcase is divided into two sections: Yuansu I: The Origin of Geometry (2007), which consists of world maps made out of honeycombs, and Yuansu II,which includes geometric and surreal formations like the piece above.

“The duality of interactions between the human body and the bees is not simply in the physical sense; more importantly it hints at an interrelated force and its counterforce,” Ri says in a press release. For the organic shapes of Yuansu II, he manipulated the bees’ movements by placing the queen bee in the middle of the box so the workers would construct around her, and then switched the position of the box every seven days.

See Ren Ri's process and honeycomb creations below:

REN RI: YUANSU PROJECTS from Pearl Lam Galleries on Vimeo.

Ren Ri's Yuansu Project will be on view at Pearl Lam Galleries until April 12, 2015.

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