Neon Jungle Nocturne
Huang Long
Grace Mattingly
Liu Yi
31st Oct – 30th Nov 2024
Opening 31th Oct 18:00 – 20:00
Liu Yi, Searching the Mountains IV, 2024,
20 x 16 cm, Oil and acrylic on linen
‘Neon Jungle Nocturne’ presents works by Long Huang, Yi Liu, and Grace Mattingly. The three artists’ latest paintings build on their previous explorations of animal motifs, spatial-temporal poetics, and the ambiguity of human experience. Each developing a distinctive visual language, the artists bring forth resonant dreamscapes where the rational and the real dissolve into an unsettling state of disorder.
Central to Long Huang’s bizarre urban nocturnes is saudade, a melancholic longing that is never to be consoled. Architectural elements conjure up memories of familiar places, yet viewers become uncertain about such memories as soon as abstract shapes and textured brushwork disrupt the spatial consistency of the paintings. Swimming pool handrails, a circular staircase, and two structures like shower enclosures indicate human activity. However, these facilities seem both defunct and illogical upon closer inspection, and human beings are nowhere to be found. Only unperturbed animals roam the uninhabited land: is this an era before the Anthropocene, an apocalyptic future after human extinction, or an absurd dream where one turns into a pelican after taking a shower?
In Yi Liu’s paintings, mythological animals become metaphors for the agonies of unfreedom and confusion underlying human existence. Ferocious beasts and serpents, chained by unseen hands, wrestle in vain with their oppressors and remain eternally trapped inside murky woods. Liu’s swift and forceful brushstrokes encapsulate both their physical struggles and internal torment. Drawing on the visual languages of traditional East Asian art, the paintings invite viewers to reinterpret old fables about violence and suffering in the world now.
A mysterious story about seduction, play, and danger unfolds in Grace Mattingly’s underwater world. Lying on the seabed like a lobster in repose, a high-heeled pump is both a sensual lure and an eerie warning. Elsewhere, it appears as one of a pair in the hands of a siren-like creature, who smirks in triumph as its androgynous and half-human body eludes categorisation. A recurring motif in Mattingly’s previous paintings, the exaggeratedly girlish heels morph into strange items with unstable meanings and unclear functions in the oceanic blur. Their hyperfeminity seems simultaneously in sync with and deconstructive of the familiar connotations of gender and sexuality.
‘Neon Jungle Nocturne’ creates a universe of jarring disquiet that sits at the margins of viewers’ reality. The tension between the friendly and the uncanny, the real and the metaphoric, undermines existing ways of seeing. In this jungle, viewers watch themselves and the world they inhabit as if through a pair of night-vision goggles.
Text by Cindy Ziyun Huang
About The Artists
Huang Long (b. 1994, Beijing, China) Graduated from Central Saint Martins with a master’s degree in 2021,lives and works in London. Long’s current practice presents a poetic self-filling process of transitioning words (artificial traces) to images under Preconsciousness. He hopes to find an unstable balance between image and text; spatiality and temporality, and also the simultaneity of these very opposing concepts.
Recent solo exhibitions: HUANG LONG, Solo Booth with MANDY ZHANG ART, Asia Now Paris France 2024; Frontier, Bonian Art Space, Beijing, China 2024
Selected recent group exhibition: Neon Jungle Nocturne, Lychee One, London, UK 2024; Setup!, Mingyuan Museum, Shanghai, China 2024; Ode to the Unexpected, Madein Gallery, Shanghai, China 2024; The Healing Power of Art and Music, Iconic Images Gallery, London, UK 2023; Winter Exhibition 2022, EDA Space, Shenzhen, China 2023; The ING Discerning Eye 2022 Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London, UK 2022; Tendencies in Painting, London Paint Club, London, UK 2022;
Prize: Shortlisted Artists, Signature Art Prize 2021/22, London, UK 2022, Shortlisted Artists, Global Design Graduate Show 2021 in collaboration with Gucci, London, UK 2021.
Residencies: Elephant Lab X Art Gazette Summer Residency, Elephant Lab & Art Gazette, London, UK 2022
Liu Yi (b. 1996, China) graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA Painting in 2024 and was the recipient of a scholarship for both her BFA and MFA at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, lives and works in London. Yi Liu draws profound influence from traditional Chinese myths and legends. Her work seeks to interrogate and elucidate the principles of liberty, multiplicity, and inclusivity, alongside the intricate complexities of the individual psyche. Characterized by inherent ambiguity and fluidity, Liu’s art contests and blurs the lines between species and dismantles conventional gender paradigms, expanding and redefining established boundaries. Yi Liu’s oeuvre synthesizes lyrical colour with the classical delineations typical of fresco techniques and a simultaneous variety of brushwork. This fusion is achieved through the use of diverse media, resulting in a visually nebulous aesthetic. This aesthetic metaphorically explores themes of love and freedom, reflecting deeply on the interplay between power structures and social norms.
Recent solo exhibitions: Searching the Mountains, Cob Gallery, London UK 2024
Neon Jungle Nocturne, Lychee One, London, UK 2024; Caper,Greatorex Street, London UK 2024; Myths & Dreams, Chilli Art Projects, London UK 2024; The Future of Belonging, Speiro Projects at Noho Venues, London UK 2024; I Lost Something in the Hills, Liliya Art Gallery, London UK 2024; Mise-en-scène, Safehouse, London UK 2024; Lawless Imagination, RuptureXIBIT(+Studio), London UK 2023
Scholarship: Half scholarship for MFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing China 2022; Full scholarship for MFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing China 2021; First-class scholarship, Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing China 2020;
Residencies: Youth Art Society, Changzhou China 2018
Grace Mattingly(b. 1991) Graduated from the Slade School of Fine art in Painting with a master’s degree in 2021, lives and works in London. Grace’s paintings are luminously bright and playful. Feminine and gender-neutral figures mingle with animals and creatures in a fantastical, atmospheric universe. Curvaceous landscapes are peppered with cowboy boots and heels, candles, and reptiles. The works exude a sunny warmth and intimacy, with their glowing, citrusy palette, that draws you closer, even whilst their scale is often life-size. Each mark is unrehearsed and dynamic, softly yet decisively applied in oil and watercolor mediums to slick surfaces on canvas, panel, and paper. The works reflect on themes of gender and sexuality, play and improvisation, and fantasy and the unconscious.
Recent solo exhibitions: Monster Party, Arusha Gallery, Bruton, UK 2024; Sundown, Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, US 2024; Untitled Miami, Huxley Parlour Gallery, Miami, US, 2022; Yellow Horses, Taymour Grahne London, UK, 2022; Secret Sunshines, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, UK, 2021.
Selected recent group exhibition: Neon Jungle Nocturne, Lychee One, London, UK 2024; Luminous Terrain, Atipografia, Arzignano, IT 2023; Art Verona Art Fair with Atipografia, Verona, IT 2023; Familiars, The Java Project, New York City, US 2022; New Mythologies II, Huxley Parlour, London, UK 2022; Intimacy, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK 2022; Internal Weather, Sid Motion Gallery, London, UK 2022; MAMA, Prior Art Space, Berlin, DE 2022
Prize: Finalist, Art Verona Icon Prize, Verona, IT 2023; Selected recipient, Sarabande Fund Slade Bursary, London, UK 2021; Slade faculty selected recipient, Chelsea Arts Club Trust MA Materials and Research Award, London, UK 2020; Grant Recipient, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation 2020; Semi-finalist, The Hopper Prize, Open call for artist grant submissions 2019; Merit scholarship winner, Grand Central Atelier, Summer Drawing Boot Camp, New York, NY 2018; Merit Scholarship recipient, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 2015-2017
Residencies: Merit scholarship recipient, Vermont Studio Center, Residency, Johnson, VT 2017;
Press: Reivew of ‘Luminous Terrain’ by Francesco Liggieri for Juliet, June 2023; Reivew of ‘Luminous Terrain’ by Elsa Barbieri for Exibart, June 2023; Review of ‘Luminous Terrain’ by Enrico Migliaccio for Inside Art, June 2023; Critical text, Tom Winter, ‘Yellow Landscape (Deer)’ for Huxley-Parlour’s In Focus 2022; ‘Yellow Saddles at the Ready’ article covering ‘Yellow Horses’ by Vanessa Murrell for émergent Magazine, April 2022; Yellow Horses’ show at Taymour Grahne Projects highlighted as a ‘Must See’ show by Art Forum, April 2022; ‘Color as a Creative Catalyst’ Interview by Millie Walton for Curatorial Affairs, February 2022