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拍品專文
“These paintings are extremely open and vulnerable. But once they lure you in, they leave you alone to explore their chromatic, spatial and psychological complexities.” Roberta Smith
Matthew Wong’s Untitled is a vibrant, intimate landscape from the artist’s later career, a period marked by the artist’s signature, innovative style and meditative essence. Here, Wong achieves a profound degree of depth with the use of sumptuous swaths of ochre, cerulean, verdant green and vermillion. Painted with intentional motions of the hand, a figure is shown in subtle repose, gazing contemplatively out toward the landscape before them. The figure stands with a feeling of resolve, their hands resting on their waist as they ponder the expanse. The lone figures that inhabit Wong’s brilliant realms have been compared to the tiny wanderers in Song Dynasty Chinese landscapes. These figures serve as guides for the eye to engage in the endless paths of these vast landscapes, and here Wong’s figure declaratively introduces the viewer to the absorbing landscape, the depths of meaning and mystery contained within the spirit of Wong’s output. Close inspection reveals that each stroke is an amalgam of pigment, the artist integrating multiple hues on the brush as he marks the canvas. Short, energetic movements comprise the leaves on the trees, while steady, composed gestures downward elicit the flowing quality of water. The artist’s use of negative space is also compelling, as it encourages the viewer to oscillate between the materiality of the composition and the imagination of their inner psyche. Wong paints vignettes of the landscape, just enough to make out the terrain presented to the subject, but abstracted enough to allow the viewer to contemplate the energetic and varied brushwork and palette. This balance of familiarity and abstraction speaks directly to the genius of Wong’s poeticism, employing paint as a wielder of dreams and reality. “These paintings,” renowned critic Roberta Smith writes, “are extremely open and vulnerable. But once they lure you in, they leave you alone to explore their chromatic, spatial and psychological complexities” (R. Smith, ‘A Final Rhapsody in Blue From Matthew Wong’, New York Times, 24 December 2019).
Within the span of an unfortunately short six-year oeuvre, Wong painted lyrically enigmatic, emotively saturated canvases—surreal dreamscapes whose bold explorations with color, expression and gesture serve as ample justification for Roberta Smith’s declaration of the artist as “‘one of the most talented painters of his generation” (R. Smith, ibid.). Wong was recently the subject of a comprehensive retrospective, Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances, which originated at the Dallas Museum of Art and later travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was also recently highlighted in the highly anticipated exhibition Matthew Wong/Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, reaffirming the lasting depth of Wong’s artistic eye and profound understanding of modern art. The former placed the artist’s work in conversation with that of the master Vincent van Gogh, an artist whom Wong identified with, writing “I see myself in him. The impossibility of belonging in this world,” (M. Wong, “Exhibition Matthew Wong Vincent van Gogh,” Van Gogh Museum). Perhaps this notion may, too, be reflected in Untitled, the figure pondering their place within this imaginative space, surveying the contrasts been the fields of pigment. Wong’s work is held in the permanent collections of several esteemed institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of, Museum of Modern Art, New York and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Matthew Wong’s Untitled is a vibrant, intimate landscape from the artist’s later career, a period marked by the artist’s signature, innovative style and meditative essence. Here, Wong achieves a profound degree of depth with the use of sumptuous swaths of ochre, cerulean, verdant green and vermillion. Painted with intentional motions of the hand, a figure is shown in subtle repose, gazing contemplatively out toward the landscape before them. The figure stands with a feeling of resolve, their hands resting on their waist as they ponder the expanse. The lone figures that inhabit Wong’s brilliant realms have been compared to the tiny wanderers in Song Dynasty Chinese landscapes. These figures serve as guides for the eye to engage in the endless paths of these vast landscapes, and here Wong’s figure declaratively introduces the viewer to the absorbing landscape, the depths of meaning and mystery contained within the spirit of Wong’s output. Close inspection reveals that each stroke is an amalgam of pigment, the artist integrating multiple hues on the brush as he marks the canvas. Short, energetic movements comprise the leaves on the trees, while steady, composed gestures downward elicit the flowing quality of water. The artist’s use of negative space is also compelling, as it encourages the viewer to oscillate between the materiality of the composition and the imagination of their inner psyche. Wong paints vignettes of the landscape, just enough to make out the terrain presented to the subject, but abstracted enough to allow the viewer to contemplate the energetic and varied brushwork and palette. This balance of familiarity and abstraction speaks directly to the genius of Wong’s poeticism, employing paint as a wielder of dreams and reality. “These paintings,” renowned critic Roberta Smith writes, “are extremely open and vulnerable. But once they lure you in, they leave you alone to explore their chromatic, spatial and psychological complexities” (R. Smith, ‘A Final Rhapsody in Blue From Matthew Wong’, New York Times, 24 December 2019).
Within the span of an unfortunately short six-year oeuvre, Wong painted lyrically enigmatic, emotively saturated canvases—surreal dreamscapes whose bold explorations with color, expression and gesture serve as ample justification for Roberta Smith’s declaration of the artist as “‘one of the most talented painters of his generation” (R. Smith, ibid.). Wong was recently the subject of a comprehensive retrospective, Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances, which originated at the Dallas Museum of Art and later travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was also recently highlighted in the highly anticipated exhibition Matthew Wong/Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, reaffirming the lasting depth of Wong’s artistic eye and profound understanding of modern art. The former placed the artist’s work in conversation with that of the master Vincent van Gogh, an artist whom Wong identified with, writing “I see myself in him. The impossibility of belonging in this world,” (M. Wong, “Exhibition Matthew Wong Vincent van Gogh,” Van Gogh Museum). Perhaps this notion may, too, be reflected in Untitled, the figure pondering their place within this imaginative space, surveying the contrasts been the fields of pigment. Wong’s work is held in the permanent collections of several esteemed institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of, Museum of Modern Art, New York and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.