Fridays are for flexing. This pair of entwined wrestlers is the work of South Korean artist Mark Yang. When Yang moved to the US to study visual arts at Columbia University, he was struck by the fact that images of nude men in American culture are usually read in an erotic way. “I’m from a culture where men are very intimate with each other,” he says. “[But here], we normalize [platonic] nudity among women, but not men.” This sparked the artist’s ongoing interest in depicting disrobed male figures engaged in intimate contact, without sexual connotation. Yang’s paintings are tender and playful, celebrating the joys of human connection in fluid lines and bold colours.
