Starting from the topic of urban extension and destruction happened in a certain city, Mountains and Rivers brings up Ran’s thoughts on the universal law of gathering and separating, while further focuses on the relationship between city and landscape, as well as the role that human plays under the absolute regularity.

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Mountains and Rivers is a map installation which combines different use of correction fluid and resin on fabric. The white-out covers the structure of cityscape, including streets, rivers, buildings, and all of the characteristic of the city. More white-out converges into a view of landscape map. Different shapes of the fluid and resin represents different forms of landscape. Cracked and dry, thick and wet, dirty and blurred, etc. Streets become rivers, walls are the mountains. While being erased in physical, the history melts into the air and become a part of nature.

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Everything comes from nothing and disappears into nothing. Nothing becomes the start of new “thingness” and the circular causality. As the aggregation of social human being and histories, the city is a product built upon the nature. Human build their city and history, and destroy it step by step with their own hands to make room for their greater desire, and a new round of self-renewal.

Human activities are playing a tricky role between the city and the nature. We keep developing ourselves rapidly, at the same time destroying ourselves at the same tempo. For nature and history, we ignore it and break it. we won’t survive from it. But all of the effort, for good or bad, is just a link in the natural circulation – from nothing to existence, and back to nothing. Under the law of universe, we are ruled.