Lovers at Night

Langberg’s scenes of homoerotic intimacy are deeply moving tributes to queer life. Beginning with models who pose in his studio, Langberg develops sketches and photographs of his subjects from life. He then uses these studies to work up larger, boldly colored compositions, such as this one depicting two nude men reclined in a tangled embrace against a plush backdrop. As he does here, the artist often thickly applies paint to depict parts of his subjects’ bodies while letting some of their extremities dissolve into the backdrop, as if they were becoming one with the spaces they occupy. Drops of thinned-down paint are squeegeed in layers to create prismatic passages that flicker with an intense chromatic haze. The resulting body of work centers the romantic and erotic lives of Langberg’s friends and lovers, generating new possibilities for figurative painting.