He Gong, “She Had Arms Also,” Mixed media on paper, 36” x 24,” 2025
$6,300.00
In She Had Arms Also, He Gong orchestrates a startling confrontation between high art and historical rupture. Botticelli’s Venus—timeless symbol of beauty and innocence—emerges not from the sea, but into a vast, uncanny desert marked by David Hockney’s roadside Americana: yellow warning signs, empty horizon, and the fragmentation of space and meaning. To her right, a hippie hitchhiker waits by the road, echoing both 1960s idealism and cultural dislocation. Further still, a soldier and child—both armed—stand before a blood-red abstraction, embodying the inheritance of violence. The title, with its ironic double meaning, questions both aesthetic purity and political naïveté: Venus had arms too—so why don’t we remember her that way? This is a geography of collision: art history, counterculture, militarism, and myth converge on a blank terrain. The affective register is elegiac, the tone layered with critique: beauty, stripped of context, is no longer innocent—it’s implicated.
Acquisition Details
• Complimentary regional delivery within Whatcom County
• Professional art handling and installation available upon request
• Installment acquisitions available upon request
Related products
-
He Gong, “Pisces,” Mixed media on paper, 32” x 37.5,” 2025
$6,300.00 -
Matthew Remsbecher, “Out of Someting,” Mixed media, 24″ x 24,” 2025
$1,600.00 -
Matthew Remsbecher, “Float,” Plaster and paint, 35″ x 51,” 2025
$2,750.00 -
Matthew Remsbecher, “Crimson Sea,” Plaster and paint, 31.5″ x 50,” 2025
$2,750.00
Reviews