Greg Gong uses the paintbrush like a scalpel, managing to whittle a forest of emotions around color. At times he achieves the desired effect through subtraction, at times through accumulation; governing every microscopic ripple of oil paint, he is able to sculpt new worlds on canvas. Someone might see an escape route, someone else a revolving door that makes us think about ourselves. Others still might see a sudden change of direction.

Beneath the whirl of color there is life, the strata of the everyday world, days that start out orange and suddenly plunge into black. Just like what happens in life. Flowers that become chasms, spheres that on closer examination turn out to be black holes. Steps on which to backtrack, decisions to regret.

Acclaimed victories, pure triumphs. This is why when you observe a painting by Greg Gong you can find everything there, inside it. The gaze cannot come to rest on one point; it keeps looking for infinite shadings, infinite like perspectives on the world. Impasse, a flying start, beginning, end. Behind a coat of yellow that makes thickness, the artist returns and settles, is reborn. And he achieves all this with philosophical – more than aesthetic – layers of oil paint.

Starting from a point in which the sign suggests the natural gesture of the hand of the draftsman that forms the archetype of the circle, in the end the paintings of Greg Gong reveal themselves through a complex technique involving dozens of coats of paint, on canvas or wooden panels. For the artist, art is a long path that passes through the almost obsessive use of the reception of the drawing, of the circle and elementary straight lines, in the contrast between horizontal and vertical representation.