‘Painting them feels like painting a friend, and my motivation is the same – capturing a specificity that comes from familiarity and love.’ – Doron Langberg
Prominent among a new generation of figurative painters, Doron Langberg creates luminous works that celebrate the physicality of touch – in subject matter and process. Depicting a range of subjects, from queer love to wildflowers and sweeping landscapes, the broad scope of themes and experiences in Langberg’s work are underscored by his deeply felt use of paint. Aspects of nature are an enduring source of inspiration, resonating feelings of connection through flowers depicted in close up or as part of enveloping vistas.
The works on view in Venice were painted en plein air at different times of the year and include cultivated garden plants as well ostensibly wild or self-seeded varieties – such as ragwort, thistle and dandelion. Langberg paints these fleeting moments spontaneously in one session, alighting on patches of ground and recording them in bursts of activity. Flowers and foliage spring from the whiteness of the canvas in flurries of brushstrokes, preserved by the artist as if moments of revelation.
For the artist, painting nature as an ‘embodied experience’ is key. Capturing both external realities and internal states of mind, he makes a connection with artists across history – for example, the landscapes of Munch or Van Gogh. The work points to the broader significance of landscapes exterior and interior, and how they relate to or signify our own emotional states.
Doron Langberg: Night, featuring large-scale tableaux of nightclub and nocturnal beach scenes, is on view at Victoria Miro, London, 26 January–28 March 2024.
Born in 1985 in Yokneam Moshava, Israel, Doron Langberg currently lives and works in New York City. He received his MFA from Yale University School of Art and holds a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Doron Langberg: Part of Your World, a major exhibition by the artist featuring new and recent paintings, is on view at Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1 February–26 May 2024. Work by the artist is on view as part of the collection display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK, and in the group show Friends & Lovers at FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA (until 10 January 2024).
An exhibition featuring new and recent works by the artist was recently on view at Rubell Museum Miami (2022–2023). In 2022, Langberg’s work was also on view at the Institute of contemporary Art in Boston as part of the major group exhibition A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now; at The Frick Collection, New York, as part of Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters, and at Institute of contemporary Art in Miami, in Fire Figure Fantasy: Selections from ICA Miami’s Collection, the first major exhibition to showcase the permanent collection. Further previous institutional group exhibitions include Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained, Hill Art Foundation, New York, USA (2023); Any distance between us, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island (2021–2022); Intimacy: New Queer Art from Berlin and Beyond at the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany (2021).
The artist’s work is in collections including Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, USA; Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, USA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston and Miami, USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), Genève, Switzerland; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA; Rennie Museum, Vancouver, Canada; RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, USA; Rubell Museum, Miami, USA.

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        Johan Creten