October/November 2020
“Time Machines”
Starry Night, 2019, oil on canvas, 60 × 70 inches; 152.4 × 177.8 cm
Matthew Wong produced some of the most tender and alluring figurative paintings in recent memory, and “Blue,” the solo show he planned before his suicide last October, contained no shortage of memorable canvases, but Starry Night (a formidable, worthy title) exudes an especially powerful gravity, its lambent heavens illuminating a vast darkness below. One sign of mastery: just look at the number of ways in which he uses dots. It nods to O’Keeffe, Kusama, and Hartley while charting its own path. Superb.
