Looking Again : Tong Tong Deng

Looking Again marks a new chapter in TongTong’s practice, presenting the artist’s first exhibition of paintings. Bringing together oil paintings, drawings and a limited-edition print, the exhibition traces the different stages of her process, from initial observation and research to colour studies and final compositions.

Born in Chengdu, China, and now based in London, TongTong’s practice is shaped by a life lived between cultures. Her early study of traditional Chinese ink painting continues to inform her approach to composition, space and observation.

TongTong’s paintings explore the quiet order embedded within everyday surfaces – the textures of the body, hair, fabric and familiar objects. Through sustained looking, she examines subtle details and structures that often go unnoticed, transforming fragments of everyday life into carefully considered compositions.

The artist’s fascination with patterns extends beyond their immediate appearance, revealing connections between the details found in everyday life and broader rhythms within nature and the world around us. Through repetition, observation and subtle shifts in form, TongTong creates compositions that invite a slower way of looking.

Informed by her cross-cultural background and grounded in Eastern philosophy, TongTong’s paintings resist fixed narratives. Instead, they create moments of stillness and suspension, allowing space for contemplation and a deeper engagement with perception, material and memory.

Her process begins with collecting visual references, developing detailed drawings, experimenting with colour studies, before translating these observations onto canvas.

Looking Again brings together these different stages of making, offering insight into TongTong’s ongoing exploration of observation, pattern and the relationship between looking and painting.