Matthew’s blue

What is the colour of solitude? For self-taught painter Matthew Wong, blue seems to be the answer. Matthew Wong:Blue View is the first museum exhibition of the Toronto-born, Chinese-Canadian artist’s work; it goes on view beginning Friday, August 13 for AGO Members and Tuesday, August 17 for Annual Passholders and the public. The show contains 40 works in total: 31 paintings and nine works on paper, all made within the last few years of his life. Organized with the support and guidance of the artist’s family, the exhibition is curated by Julian Cox, AGO Deputy Director & Chief Curator.

Wong was born in 1984 in Toronto. An only child, his childhood and adolescence were split between periods in Hong Kong and Toronto. He attended The York School and went on to graduate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with a BA in Cultural Anthropology in 2007. He eventually found his way to photography, prompting him to enroll at the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media. Although his interest in academia and photography waned during his studies, he graduated with an MFA degree in 2013. His interest shifted towards poetry, drawing and then painting in the years after school; the last two becoming ingrained in his daily routine. Wong taught himself how to paint through research, experimentation and discussions with fellow artists and art world figures. 

Like many artists of our digital era, Wong shared his art on social media. He commented on Facebook, posted on Instagram and blogged on Tumblr, quickly attracting the attention of the art world. By 2016, his work was featured in group exhibitions in Hong Kong, China and New York. Further acclaim followed soon after with his self-titled solo debut exhibition at Karma Gallery in 2018. Art critic Jerry Saltz described it as “one of the most impressive solo New York debuts” he had ever seen. In his brief career, Wong spent roughly five years working as an artist, the last three in relative solitude in his Edmonton, Alberta studio.  

Matthew Wong, Blue Night, 2018. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 121.9 cm. © 2018 Matthew Wong Foundation. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.

It’s in this studio, between 2017 and 2019, where he created the works featured in Blue View. The colour blue, shown in its many saturated tonalities, permeates Wong’s compositions of nocturnal landscapes, still lifes and interiors. Building on the painting techniques of an array of his artistic predecessors – Georges Seurat’s Pointillist stipples, Vincent van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist dashes, literati painting’s washes of colour – Wong created a point of view  distinctly his own. Take, for example, the oil painting Starry Night (2019). An homage to Van Gogh’s famous 1889 painting, it’s much larger in size (measuring roughly 5 feet by 5 feet 8 inches). Circular dabs of yellow swirl across the midnight blue sky, like eyes peering over the hills and trees and back at the viewer. Short dashes of white and blue line the water as if to gleam with moonlit luminosity. It’s an isolated, evocative landscape, blurring the line between dream and reality. “I do believe that there is an inherent loneliness or melancholy to much of contemporary life,” Wong once said when asked about his work, “I feel my work speaks to this quality, in addition to being a reflection of my thoughts, fascinations, and impulses.” Whether the artworks in the Blue series depict real or imagined scenes, they suggest an artist grappling with a deeply melancholic inner life.

Matthew Wong, Starry Night, 2019. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 177.8 cm. © 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.

Wong died by suicide at age 35 in October 2019. He was diagnosed with clinical depression and Tourette's syndrome in his childhood and identified as being on the autism spectrum in his adult years, just before his passing. At the unveiling of his posthumous solo exhibition at Karma Gallery in New York, art critic Roberta Smith referred to Wong as “one of the most talented painters of his generation”.  

“These paintings are extremely open and vulnerable,” she continued. “But once they lure you in, they leave you alone to explore their chromatic, spatial and psychological complexities.”

Wong’s paintings in oil and gouache are held in private and public collections around the globe; notably MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2020, the AGO acquired The Long Way Home, an oil painting from Wong’s early practice in 2014-15. His parents Monita and Raymond gifted the painting in their son’s memory.

Plan your next visit to the AGO here and experience Matthew Wong: Blue View in person on Level 1 in Philip B. Lind Gallery (galleries 131-132).