Alyssa Tang works the human figure as a study in material and pressure. A Canadian-Chinese multidisciplinary artist, architect, and designer based in Hong Kong, she paints in oil and charcoal on canvas and linen, focusing on the organic reality of skin, muscle, and flesh. Works like Bound, Scale, and Race hold the body in states of restraint, proportion, and psychological tension — never as anatomy, always as something being acted upon.
The Body as Material and Pressure
Tang's figures are not portraits and they are not studies of anatomy. They are bodies under load. Skin, muscle, and flesh are treated as materials with properties — things that compress, resist, hold, and give — and the paintings are built to record what happens to them when something presses in. The psychological reading follows from the physical one rather than being imposed on top of it.
That approach owes something to her training. Working across art, architecture, and design gives her a structural instinct about weight, proportion, and load-bearing, and it shows in how the figures are built. You can hear her describe the practice in her own words in Alyssa Tang's studio interview on the Art of NOMA channel.
Why Does She Work in Oil and Charcoal?
Because the two materials do opposite jobs and she needs both. Oil supplies weight, saturation, and emotional gravity — the density that makes a body feel like it has mass. Charcoal supplies provisional line: instinctive, unresolved, uncorrected, and visibly the work of a hand thinking in real time.
Holding them in the same painting means structure and vulnerability sit side by side rather than one resolving the other. It is why the work reads as tense rather than settled. Nothing has been smoothed over, and the evidence of decision-making stays on the surface where you can see it.
Format as Argument in Race and Scale
Race (84 × 175 cm, 2025, USD 6,000) is the largest statement of the idea. It is not a literal race but the sensation of speed and internal drive — the body caught between control and volatility. The elongated horizontal format sets the terms: the eye moves laterally across the surface, following rhythm rather than reading a scene, while soft transitions and abrupt marks keep the motion unsettled.
Scale (22.6 × 60 cm, 2025, USD 1,000) runs the same logic in miniature. The compressed elongated field pulls the eye slowly across so that small shifts in weight register, and the title points as much to balance and emphasis as to measurement. It comes mounted and framed in black painted wood, and at this size it is the most approachable entry point into her work.
Restraint and Closeness in Bound and Adjourn
Bound (72 × 52 cm, 2024, USD 2,800) carries both senses of its title at once — limitation and attachment, held in the same frame. At this intimate scale the negative space does much of the work, and the restrained marks draw the viewer close enough that the tension between depth and exposed line becomes the subject.
Adjourn (74 × 107 cm, 2025, USD 3,000) is a moment deliberately deferred. The title names a suspension and the composition sustains it instead of releasing it; the horizontal format slows the eye and holds it in stillness, so the work reads as something interrupted and kept that way. Read against Race, it is the same enquiry with the momentum switched off.
Where to Start With Alyssa Tang
Her available catalogue currently runs from USD 1,000 to USD 6,000, and the useful thing is that the enquiry does not change across that range — Scale at 22.6 × 60 cm and Race at 84 × 175 cm are the same artist asking the same question at two levels of commitment. Every work is an original, one of a kind, stretched or framed and supplied with a certificate of authenticity.
Every price is published on the work itself, with no “price on request” and no need to ask before you know whether something is in reach. Art of NOMA is an online gallery, which means there is no room to walk into and no one hovering while you decide; you can sit with a painting for three weeks and then ask a question, and the answer comes from the people who actually placed the work.
Common Questions About Alyssa Tang
Who is Alyssa Tang?
Alyssa Tang is a Canadian-Chinese multidisciplinary artist, architect, and designer based in Hong Kong, represented by Art of NOMA. Her paintings treat the human figure as a study in material and pressure, focusing on the organic reality of skin, muscle, and flesh in states of restraint, proportion, and psychological tension.
What medium does Alyssa Tang work in?
Oil and charcoal on canvas and linen. The oil supplies density and saturation while the charcoal contributes instinctive, unresolved line, so structure and vulnerability remain visible in the same image. Her works range from 22.6 × 60 cm up to 84 × 175 cm, and each is an original, one of a kind.
How much does an Alyssa Tang painting cost?
Available originals currently run from USD 1,000 to USD 6,000 depending on scale: Scale (22.6 × 60 cm) at USD 1,000, Bound (72 × 52 cm) at USD 2,800, Adjourn (74 × 107 cm) at USD 3,000, and Race (84 × 175 cm) at USD 6,000. Every price is shown on the work; nothing is listed as price on request.
Where can I buy original Alyssa Tang art?
Original paintings by Alyssa Tang are available directly from Art of NOMA, with insured worldwide shipping and a certificate of authenticity on every piece. Browse the available works on her artist collection page, where each painting shows its dimensions, year, and price.
Are Alyssa Tang's paintings ready to hang?
Yes. Race, Adjourn, and Bound are stretched and mounted on a wooden frame, and Scale is mounted and framed in black painted wood. All four arrive ready to hang with a certificate of authenticity included.
Browse every available work on the Alyssa Tang collection, explore more original paintings, or meet the full roster on our artists page.