Yongqi Tang’s Lullaby at Jupiter Contemporary

Strange Tales: The Painted Wall, 2023. Oil on canvas, triptych. 72 x 216 in. (72 by 72 in. per panel). Image courtesy of Jupiter Contemporary.

By CLARE GEMIMA, June 2023

People drove miles to experience the highly anticipated opening of Lullaby, Yongqi Tang’s mesmerizing solo presentation of paintings, drawings, and sculptures currently showing in Miami. Luckily for me, I was able to spend time with both the artist and Gabriel Kilongo, the powerhouse behind Jupiter Contemporary’s impressive gallery space in Northbeach’s Normandy – quite possibly the only reason you’d want to visit Miami before December.

All aspects of the Shenzhen born artist’s process are on display, evocative of not only her blatant and multi-faceted artisanal skillset, but also her in-depth, and rich reverence for Baroque and Renaissance periods, Chinese literature, and both Eastern and Western painting philosophies. Tang’s overarching research project Strange Tales takes its name from a traditional Chinese compilation of short, mythological ghost stories, dating back to the 1700’s. Thinking these would be haunting apparition accounts, Tang assured me that for as many scary ones, there were also rather funny, less frightening entries too – out of about 496 all together.  

The specific story Tang decided to work with for her most recently completed, and by far Lullaby’s most mentally imprinting painting, Strange Tales: The Painted Wall, is actually more on the romantic side, following a story of a man who entered a temple and accidentally fell in lust with a beautifully painted female figure inside of one of its murals. The fool's further seduction by the fresco’s enticing babe flings him into a hypnagogic state of existence, inviting him to a place exempt from all animalistic, and humane control. In a four post bed backed up against what could possibly be the same original mural, fairy-esque creations sprinkle above two lovers intermeshed in one another, oblivious to all external judgement spewing from the painting’s precarious cast of onlooking characters. According to Liaozhai zhiyi, or in english, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the female lover’s hair is worn long and free before she loses her virginity. Viewers are spoiled to see the same spirit with her hair tied up through Tang’s monumentally sized, 18 foot wide oil painted storyboard, where we see her ghostly outline stand in regret as she watches her past self make love. Reading this painting left to right, viewers learn of the man’s intrusion to be so alarming to the painting’s demon protector, that the fairies' earlier (and adorable) attempt to hide him under the bed feels naughty and outrageously sacrilegious. Towards the end, or right of the painting, we can see the man etching for a quick exit with nothing left to lose, struggling to break free from Tang’s protective, and improvised guard dog. 

[Coseup of middle and right panel] Strange Tales: The Painted Wall, 2023. Oil on canvas, triptych. 72 x 216 in. (72 by 72 in. per panel). Image courtesy of Jupiter Contemporary.  

The way Tang has painted the environment of the curious man’s fling blurs the borders between supernatural, and everyday realities. The artist employs shan shui techniques in her character’s outdoor backdrop, born out of an ancient Chinese art movement where mountains and rivers were rendered with brushes and inks, forming almost calligraphic-like landscapes. In another example of a famously inspired environment, Wild Strawberries (After Luncheon on the Grass) borrows a historical foundation from which the artist can pick and play with. The choice for Tang to respond to a painting as potent as Manet’s 1863 picnic scene sheds light onto the artist’s portrayal of women, whether deliberate or not. The 19th century painting shook Paris in many ways, for one reason being that the painting’s main character was not an illusion, nor an idealized outer-earthly being – she was merely human, and way too scantily-clad for the work to be taken seriously. Tang plays with similar ideas of reality in Three Goddesses (Testing), an oil painting deliciously thick with wax, which voyeurs three naked figures supporting each other’s three-way, at-forest covid test. Through Tang’s own interpretation, and in her rendering of Strange Tales’ mostly female ghosts, the artist celebrates her own attunement to female figures throughout art history, and equalises this with a balanced sense of fact and fiction in each and every artwork. 

Wild Strawberries (After Luncheon on the Grass), 2022. Oil on panel. 22 x 30 in. Image courtesy of Jupiter Contemporary. 

Kilongo’s unfaltering pride in Tang was refreshing to experience coming out of New York, and his repeated comments to the artist about gathering supplies so she could continue making work was merely one example of his raw kindness that permeated throughout my trip. The young gallerist’s fortuitous skill in connecting artists, writers, scholars, and collectors radiated on Lullaby’s opening night, yet he never once took the spotlight off Tang. Kilongo’s respect for her paintings was not only realized by way of the exhibition's installation, but in how he excitedly ran to the gallery’s back storage to pull out a painting that was yet to be exhibited. His enthusiasm in broadcasting young talent led to the choice of  Tang’s drawing Three Goddesses (Testing) being hung in the bathroom, with its eponymously titled oil painting hanging to the right of its entrance. Kilongo’s curatorial curiosity concerned itself across all mediums worked with for this exhibition, which he leans on to weave narratives through the artist’s two and three dimensional processes. Drawings start to repeat themselves in sculptural forms throughout Jupiter, an example evident in the bathroom’s revealingly titled neighbouring graphite miniature, Nothing Matters More Than Painting, which has been additionally studied through clay to make Dreamer. 

Three Goddesses (Testing), 2022. Oil on yupo paper mounted on panel 30 x 20 in. Image courtesy of Jupiter Contemporary. 

Paying homage to the way Tang referentially looks to historical heavy weights like Bruegel, Botticelli, Goya, and Manet, it was unequivocally clear in my mind that through a merging of historical knowledge, and desire to learn, that and a massive amount of mutual and artistic respect between Kilongo and Tang had been long since established – the strawberry on the cake to an extremely successful, and courageous show.  

Dreamer, 2023. Ceramic relief mounted in shadow box. 11 x 14 x  3.5 in. Image courtesy of Jupiter Contemporary. 

Lullaby by Yongqi Tang runs at Jupiter Contemporary to June 24, 2023. For more information about the exhibition, visit: https://jupitercontemporary.com/yongqi-tang WM