» Gray Nude

Gray Nude forms part of an ongoing series by Doan Hoang Lam, which looks at the sensuous properties of the human body. The partially rendered human-like shapes in his paintings look as if they are hovering in space, or emerging from behind the surface. Sometimes vulnerable and concealed, they have their backs to us; but mostly confrontational and powerful, they stare straight ahead, with their bare skin, disembodied figures and provoking positions all on display… Distorted and exaggerated, the body is repeatedly abstracted through the artist’s manipulations of forms and shifts in scales, acting as much a symbol of desire and a celebration of beauty as an object of fetish and an embodiment of violence. Here, the familiar has been made uncanny. Just a degree or two away from reality, we are left in an uncomfortable position, our senses toyed with, and our perceptions of affection/abjection, normality/abnormality, morality/immorality disrupted and questioned.