Untitled (Ping Pong)
- Artist: Peter Doig
- Date: 2006–8
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 2398 × 3595 × 65 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the “Untitled (Ping Pong)” by Peter Doig. The canvas, about two metres long and a metre wide, is an oil on canvas that captures the familiar Doig motif of an isolated, anonymous figure standing in an indistinct landscape. The setting feels almost dislocated, as if the figure has slipped out of a familiar frame and is now suspended in a dreamlike haze. Doig often plays with the tension between narrative and pure visuality; in this piece the figure could be a ghost of a memory or a suggestion of a story that never quite comes to fruition. The work’s atmosphere is charged, yet the narrative remains uncertain, pulling the viewer between seeing it as a series of expressive marks and as a representational image. Doig himself has spoken about the primal, non‑linguistic quality of his paintings, describing a “numbness” he tries to achieve through heightened colours and materiality. Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Roman Family Collection, this work is part of a recent display that invites us to rethink the figure in contemporary painting.
See it in person
Untitled (Ping Pong) is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
