November 15, 2019
Installation view of Matthew Wong, “Blue,” at Karma, 2019. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Karma, New York.
Karma has mounted a deeply moving tribute to Matthew Wong, the 35-year-old artist who died last month by suicide. During his brief career, the artist left his own sensitive and lovely marks. No works are for sale, out of respect to Wong’s family. Blue hues unite the melancholic presentation, split into two spaces where paintings and works on paper are on view.
Nods to Georges Seurat’s pointillism and Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Nets” give texture to this self-taught painter’s canvases, which also demonstrate a burgeoning visual language all their own. The works feature spooky, solitary scenes: a ray of light slanting onto a table in an empty room; the moon shining through slatted blinds; a lone flower sprouting from a half-full water glass. Light and darkness coexist in these compositions, and the viewer can see the quiet appeal of the latter. At a more intimate scale, the works on paper are even more heartbreaking. They feature a tiny car driving through the dark, a ruffled gray curtain concealing a window view, and a small house with a chimney issuing smoke into the pitch black sky.
