Doron Langberg, Nisan and Idan in the Studio, 2015. New Now London.
With his charged and highly narrative style, Doron Langberg (b. 1985) is a standout artist among a generation of increasingly visible figurative painters working with deeply personal themes and emotional forms of representation. Langberg often depicts himself, his family, friends, and partner in banal scenes with emphasis on modes of queer intimacy, community, and everyday experiences. In what some have dubbed the "New Queer Intimism," Langberg presents his circle of friends and lovers, often arranging them in domestic interiors executed in dissolving washes of color that blur the boundaries between material reality and memory.
The present work, Nisan and Idan in the Studio, exemplifies the artist’s use of luminous colours coated in translucent layers of orange, navy, brown, and black. This interior scene is dominated by two figures, Nisan and Idan, at ease in the foreground. Typical of Langberg’s practice, these figures both emerge from and withdraw into their environment through convergent colors and the artist’s emphasis on proximity. Their faces act as impressions of their presence, capturing the viewer’s attention and inviting a deeper look at a quiet, shared moment.
Painting has such an ability to communicate emotionally and empathically in a way that just resonates with me since I can remember. ̶ Doron Langberg
Langberg refers to art history and makes plain the influences he received from Pierre Bonnard, Edvard Munch, and Vincent Van Gogh, among others. The use of colors and sense of closeness between figures, their surroundings, and the landscape fascinates Langberg as he incorporates these artists’ styles into his own approach. The artist works in fast and broad strokes with a light touch, mixing in a variety of textures and gestures to create a dreamlike surface, almost inviting the viewer to contemplate on the process of creating a work. Nisan and Idan in the Studio beautifully manifests this style as this scene freezes a moment in time, narrowing an emotional distance between the sitters and the artist himself.
Pierre Bonnard, Le déjeuner (Breakfast), circa 1932, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Image: akg-images / Maurice Babey.
Bonnard's influence is particulary evident in Langberg's compositional choices. In both Nisan and Idan in the Studio and Bonnard's Le déjeuner (Breakfast), lush color imparts a material quality to the work, relating the subject(s) to the backdrop in a way that focuses more on the scene as a whole rather than separate entities; they embody their scene as constituent elements. For Langberg, this has the effect of expressing the ease with which his subjects engage the viewer. They are relaxed but vulnerable, inviting but only within the moment Langberg captures, creating a shared moment between artist, subject, and onlooker.
Langberg’s recontextualizing of art history is further emphasized by tender scenes that engage the viewer by encouraging insightful conversations on socially constructed assumptions and so-called norms. Addressing these issues within domestic and working spaces such as the home and studio, and within the intimate dynamics of the family and our closest relationships, Langberg explores the ways in which intimacy is activated and operates in painting.
Doron Langberg. Amy in Her Studio, 2017. Sold for £163,800 at Phillips' 20th Century & Contemporary Art London Sale, March 2022.
Intimacy, in turn, is expressed through immediacy. At the heart of Langberg's practice is an empathetic release, one which is instantly shared by subject and viewer through the artist's mediation; a breaking down of difference by way of recognition. Whether or not we know the Nisan or the Idan, they stand in for a Nisan or an Idan in our lives, intimate and as closely held to us in our worlds as they are to Langberg in his, further establishing a connective, identifiable humanity in the artist's work.
The Israeli-born artist began painting at the age of six. Now represented by Victoria Miro, he lives and works in New York. Langberg received his BFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MFA from Yale University. The artist was celebrated in key shows hosted by the Schwules Museum, Berlin, in 2021, Public Art Fund, New York, in 2020, and BRIC, Brooklyn, in 2019. Most recently, Langberg was awarded his first solo exhibition Give Me Love with Victoria Miro in London, which ran from September to November 2021. The artist debuted at auction with Phillips in March 2022.
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