Matthew Wong, “The Kingdom,” 2017 (Courtesy of Collection of Liz Lange and David Shapiron. © Matthew Wong Foundation c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023)
The art of Edmonton painter Matthew Wong will be featured in a major exhibition in the Netherlands.
Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort will be on view at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from Mar. 1 to Sept. 1, 2024. It will explore the connections between Wong's work and that of Van Gogh, whose art inspired Wong more than any other.
Wong was a mostly self-taught artist who began painting in 2011 at the age of 27. He quickly garnered international attention for his work and life, including shows at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Dallas Museum of Art. The New York Times labelled him “one of the most talented painters of his generation.”
“Wong’s paintings—mostly imagined landscapes—are portals to luminous, vibrant, moody places. Though not surreal, they are the product of reverie: poetic concoctions inspired by memory, stray ideas, or the paint itself as he compulsively worked it,” wrote Raffi Khatchadourian in The New Yorker.
Born in 1984 in Toronto, Wong died by suicide in 2019 in Edmonton just as his career was taking off. Wong held a degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan and an MFA in photography from the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media.
Source: Van Gogh Museum The Matthew Wong Foundation and The New Yorker