Among all the shows opening in Tribeca and Chinatown in October, The Open Venus at Lattitude Gallery stood out. There is no shortage of painting exhibitions right now, so an artist’s work must be exceptional to stand out. Yongqi Tang uses a Renaissance-inspired style and Catholic and Greek symbology to express the brutality of becoming beautiful.
Tang uses Renaissance art as satire, perverting tableaus of knights and ladies with gore and excrement. Tang’s paintings point out a hidden truth: beauty is pain. In the case of Tang’s paintings, pain is also beautiful. She depicts figures displaying their wounds on canvases dripping with blood. These pieces are reminiscent of Christ showing off his Stigmata. Tang’s piece, The Wound, is primarily referential to Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. In The Wound, the figure’s hand is in their wound, putting the character in both the role of Christ and Saint Thomas.
The show’s color palette is consistent, staying in the realm of reds, grays, and browns. These hues conjure images of dirt, blood, and viscera. The hues of the paintings emphasize the reality of the body, confronting the viewer with the abject. Color is particularly interesting in Knight Peeing in a Landscape, where the landscape is yellow, allowing the knight’s unclothed lower half and the stream of urine coming from him to blend into the landscape, drawing attention to his red cape. The viewer first ignores the abject representation of pissing and is then confronted with their ignorance when finally taking in the whole piece.
In Tang’s work, Venus is not merely born but created. The artist draws upon her own experience of scoliosis surgery, showing Venus’s back being cut open. The eponymous piece, Opening the Venus, in particular, shows the act of creation and the vulnerability involved in creating oneself. In the painting, Venus lays naked and face down while red phantoms reach inside the open cavity of her back.
Tang includes some of her research pieces, two watercolor studies, and a charcoal sketch for Threading the Venus, which are interesting in their own right. The sketch, in particular, exemplifies her process. It is obviously collaged, which shows the changes Tang has made over time in constructing the piece. Including studies in the exhibition makes it unique and allows an exciting look into the process, breaking down the barrier between viewer and artist.
Tang is still a pretty young artist, having only received her MFA two years ago, but she is very established for her age. The Open Venus is conceptually rigorous, and the art world will hopefully continue to see Tang confront challenging themes in her art and grow as a painter.
Yongqi Tang: The Open Venus at Latitude Gallery
October 11 – November 10, 2024
Images courtesy of Latitude Gallery and the Artist
