
Matthew Wong at Cheim & Reid
May 5, 2022 — Sep 3, 2022
Few artists dazzle with the brilliance and intensity of Matthew Wong, whose career was cut tragically short when he died by suicide at the age of 35. Wong’s visceral urge to draw and paint is felt throughout his work, and perhaps most powerfully so in a series of paintings he made during a three month stay in Los Angeles in 2016. Sizzling with that city’s frenetic energy, the work dances between abstraction and representation. Wong’s ecstatic dots, yearning lines, and inky pools contain vast realms of emotion, and emerge as the true subjects of the paintings. Standing in front of a Matthew Wong, you can do little else but plunge in and lose yourself.