Matthew Wong 1984-2019
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Overview
Matthew Wong was a self-taught Canadian painter whose surreal, poetic motifs vaulted him to the top contemporary art in just a few short years. The artist's iconic imagery often features lone figures wandering in dappled, imaginary landscapes, and moody, emotional interiors painted from memory. In his words, these images “activate nostalgia, both personal and collective.” Wong was hailed as “one of the most talented painters of his generation” by Roberta Smith.
Born in 1984 in Toronto, he earned a BA in 2007 in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MFA in 2013 in photography from the School of Creative Media of the City University in Hong Kong. Wong's painting practice was truncated to only six years from 2014 to his untimely death in 2019. His work, however, broadly invokes art historical precedents that range from tenth century Chinese literati painting to the Western canon including artists like Chaim Soutine, Vincent Van Gogh, Louise Bourgeois, and Yayoi Kusama.
The artist rose to international prominence in 2017 when he was featured in a number of group exhibitions in New York, including at Cheim & Read, where his work was reproduced in a review in the The New York Times. Wong's first U.S. solo exhibition opened at Karma in New York in March 2018, and was again reviewed in The New York Times and The New Yorker, among others.In October 2019, he took his life in Edmonton, Canada, where he lived. He was 35, and suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, Autism, and depression. His second New York solo exhibition, Blue, was scheduled to open that November, and it went ahead as planned as a posthumous memorial to the artist, with no works for sale.The first museum exhibition of Wong's work, Blue View, organized by Julian Cox, was on view alongside Picasso's Blue Period paintings at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. An exhibition was on view at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2022, and a forthcoming exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will pair his work with Van Gogh's. Wong's work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. -
Works
Matthew Wong 1984-2019
BLUES FOR TARKOVSKY 2019
Acrylic on paper16 1/2 x 11 5/8 inches
41.91 x 29.53 centimetersExhibitions-
Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
18 Apr - 21 Jul 2023 -
Art Basel Miami Beach
29 Nov - 3 Dec 2022Cheim & Read is pleased to participate in Art Basel Miami Beach 2022 with a presentation of works by Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Fishman, Ron...Read more -
Art Basel
14 - 19 Jun 2022Cheim & Read is delighted to participate in the 2022 edition of Art Basel with a presentation of works by Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Ron Gorchov, Bill Jensen, Joan Mitchell,...Read more -
Matthew Wong
The New World, Paintings from Los Angeles 2016 9 May - 10 Sep 2022Cheim & Read is pleased to present Matthew Wong: Paintings from Los Angeles 2016, which will open on May 4 and run through September 10 at the gallery’s Chelsea location....Read more -
Some People
24 Feb - 4 Jun 2022Cheim & Read is pleased to present Some People, a thematic group exhibition that explores portraiture from the 1930s to the present day, and features over thirty artists. The show...Read more -
Art Basel Miami Beach
30 Nov - 14 Feb 2021Cheim & Read is delighted to particiapte in this year's Art Basel Miami Beach with a presenation of works by Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, William Eggleston, Ron Gorchov, Al Held,...Read more -
Art Basel
22 - 26 Sep 2021We are happy to be reunited with our colleagues and clients from around the world here at Art Basel for the first time since lockdown. Our presentation this year includes...Read more -
Matthew Wong
Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013–2017 5 May - 3 Sep 2021Cheim & Read is pleased to present Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013–2017, an exhibition of ink drawings on rice paper. These works represent some of the...Read more
PublicationsNews-
Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances
Dallas Museum of Art October 6, 2023 Read more -
Matthew Wong Turned Loneliness Into A Landscape
September 4, 2023 Read more -
Matthew Wong's Tenacious Vision
January 10, 2023 Read more -
Matthew Wong
The Dallas Museum of Art November 3, 2022 Read more -
What To See In N.Y.C. Galleries Right Now
August 11, 2022 Read more -
Matthew Wong: The New World, Paintings from Los Angeles 2016
Cheim & Read July 1, 2022 Read more -
Matthew Wong's Solitude and Longing in New York
June 22, 2022 Read more -
Matthew Wong's Life in Light and Shadow
May 9, 2022 Read more -
Autism, Tourettes and $5m paintings
August 3, 2021 Read more -
Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013–2017
Cheim & Read June 9, 2021 Read more -
Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013-2017
Cheim & Read June 8, 2021 Read more -
Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013-2017
Cheim & Read May 25, 2021 Read more -
The Late Artist Matthew Wong Made an Ink Drawing Every Morning
April 14, 2021 Read more -
Matthew Wong Ink Works, Never Before Exhibited, Will Alight in New York
April 13, 2021 Read more -
The Horizontal
Cheim & Read July 21, 2017 Read more