MASSIOMDECARLO Pièce Unique is pleased to present “The Abyss” by Mark Yang. Yang’s practice is an ongoing exploration of the human figure, combining the tropes of art history with his own personal experiences.

For his debut exhibition with the gallery, Yang presents three canvases. “The fall of the damned” are large-scale, high contrast vertical compositions, animated by clusters of meandering limbs. As if compressed within the boundaries of the canvas, hands, feet, arms and torsos appear woven together and frozen in time in their downward spiral. This is the first time that Yang paints men and women’s bodies together in the same canvas. As much as this new body of work hinges on a certain sense of despair – inspired by the artist’s vivid memories of religious iconography in European altarpieces, the painting’s soft lines invite the eye to wander across its flowing, faceless figures. Indeed, Yang takes chiaroscuro to new limits, illuminating these plummeting limbs in stark whites that contrast with the depths of the shadows below. And yet as the eye travels from hands to knees to upside-down toes, the composition acquires an abstract, ballet-like dimension.

Over the course of the exhibition, each work will be presented consecutively, first individually, then two by two and finally, all three together, evoking the three-piece structure of the baroque altarpieces that inspired this series.

Photography by Thomas Lannes