Matthew Wong: The New World

Cheim & Read is pleased to present Matthew Wong: Paintings from Los Angeles 2016. This is Wong's second solo exhibition at the gallery, which follows Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013-2017. The works in Paintings from Los Angeles 2016 differ markedly from those widely exhibited during the artist's lifetime. Instead of the blues which have become virtually synonymous with the artist in the public imagination, the palette and textures of these paintings reflect the super-heated atmosphere of Los Angeles, where a teeming metropolis collides with the harsh natural landscape: the Pacific ocean, mountains, and desert. Wong, a Canadian artist who was born in Toronto in 1984 and lived and worked in Edmonton, made these paintings in 2016 during a three-month stay in Los Angeles, the last stop on a visit which included New York and Michigan. The brushwork is loaded and expressionistic, revealing a distinct and compelling aspect of Wong's practice. These works seem to combine the color of the French Fauvists with the alienated sensuality of the German expressionist Die Br©ơcke group, like Erich Heckel or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and the plaintive directness of Georges Rouault with the streetwise grittiness of the East Village scene of the 1980s. In one image, a man and a woman copulate on the beach under the stars. Other paintings are startling in their simplicity, with mountains, sea, and sky distilled to their essence. Some compositions are clustered with information, with nude figures walking through jungle-like settings, while others are spare, even stark, as in Infinity, where a lone grisaille figure wanders along an empty highway receding to the horizon.… (more)