Director’s Foreword

Arteaga, Agustín

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Director’s Foreword

Agustín Arteaga

Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances

In 2017, the Dallas Museum of Art became the first and only museum to acquire Matthew Wong’s work during his lifetime. The painting, The West, exhibits many hallmarks of Wong’s distinctive style: the sensorial use of nonmimetic color, the vast landscape, the lone figure. It conveys the artist’s singular approach to the world, one that finds...

Author

Agustín Arteaga

PublisherDallas Museum of Art

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100091

Director’s Foreword

In 2017, the Dallas Museum of Art became the first and only museum to acquire Matthew Wong’s work during his lifetime. The painting, The West, exhibits many hallmarks of Wong’s distinctive style: the sensorial use of nonmimetic color, the vast landscape, the lone figure. It conveys the artist’s singular approach to the world, one that finds beauty and meaning in the quietest and most intimate of moments. With a short but prolific seven-year career, Wong has left behind a remarkable legacy of beauty and poetry, dialogue and experimentation. We at the DMA are honored to be continued participants in Wong’s story through this retrospective of his mesmerizing oeuvre.

Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances offers the first comprehensive account in the United States of Wong’s artistic evolution. This publication features over sixty paintings, spanning his early experimentations in ink, oil, acrylic, and gouache beginning in 2013 in China and Hong Kong until his untimely death in 2019 in Canada. Self-taught, he avidly studied and drew from artists, poets, and filmmakers he admired, including Etel Adnan, Bada Shanren, Henri Cole, Lois Dodd, Vincent van Gogh, Philip Guston, Yayoi Kusama, Joan Mitchell, Shitao, Andrei Tarkovsky, Bob Thompson, Ocean Vuong, and Jonas Wood. The informal, colloquial relationships Wong developed online in his formative years also shaped the lively dialogue with artists and past masters he likewise engendered in his paintings.

We are especially indebted to Vivian Li, the Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, for having conceived and organized the exhibition and its accompanying publication. Vivian has conducted a staggering level of primary research, carrying out interviews with Wong’s colleagues, friends, mentors, and admirers to produce a nuanced and sensitive presentation of the artist’s world, from his keen use of art history and innovation to his web of social connections both on and off the Internet. This ambitious project is the result of her expansive vision.

This publication examines Wong’s inventive approach to art and artmaking. The texts introduce new perspectives on Wong’s painting practice that trace his pivotal shift from abstraction to landscape and his elusive status as an outsider artist. Vivian Li’s essay explores his turn to landscape painting and his investment in social networks and communities that shaped the growth of his own distinctive visual idiom. Matthew Higgs, Director and Chief Curator of White Columns, reflects on his experience collaborating with Wong when he included the artist in the pivotal group show Outside in 2016 and on Wong’s unconventional yet deeply personal engagement in the art world. Laura Eva Hartman, Paintings Conservator at the DMA, uses technical analysis to discuss Wong’s reworking of paintings and his chameleonlike dexterity with an array of painterly approaches and techniques. Lesley Ma, the Ming Chu Hsu and Daniel Xu Associate Curator of Asian Art in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, delves into Wong’s daring experiments with ink painting and how it strongly informed the development of his overall artistry. Hilde Nelson, former Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art at the DMA, considers the poetics of film in Wong’s conjuring of affective worlds. Veronica Myers, former McDermott Intern for Contemporary Art at the DMA, contributed the detailed and thoughtfully illustrated chronology and exhibition history.

An exhibition catalogue would be nothing without the contributions of talented professionals. We are indebted to Miko McGinty and Julia Ma for their beautiful design and Amy Reigle Newland for her expert editorial work. At the DMA, Giselle Castro-Brightenburg, Paul Molinari, Veronica Treviño, and Eric Zeidler kept the publication on track through every stage of production. We equally thank Stephen Cebik and Nick Geller at Yale University Press, who partnered with us in distributing this title, and the team at Cheim & Read gallery for their assistance in furthering the evolution of the project, including Maria Bueno, Sara Hutchins, Howard Read, and Stephen Truax. Our heartfelt appreciation goes to John Cheim, who was an early champion and mentor to Wong.

Both exhibition and publication would not be possible without Monita and Raymond Wong of the Matthew Wong Foundation and their deep generosity and advocacy for their son’s vision. We are immeasurably grateful for their support. Special thanks also to Winnie Ip of the Foundation for her steadfast help and sharing of much-needed materials.

The work of a museum is the product of the incredible efforts by staff across multiple departments—from project conception to the closing day of the exhibition—and this exhibition and publication are no exception. In particular, we offer our sincere thanks to Ken Bennett, Tara Eaden, Ingrid Van Haastrecht, Stacey Lizotte, Brad Pritchett, and their Security, Operations, Development, Education, and Marketing and Communications teams, respectively, for their tireless efforts to connect art and audiences. Additional recognition goes to Selena Anguiano, Kate Aoki, Erick Baker, Amandine Bandelier, JC Bigornia, Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Amanda Dietz Brooks, Trey Burns, Sean Cairns, Lizz DeLera, Cristina Echezarreta, Brad Flowers, Sara Greenberg, Laura Eva Hartman, Janet Hitt, Rachael Huszar, Sabrina Lovett, Martha Lopez, Elia Maturino, Susan McIntyre, Aschelle Morgan, Nicole Myers, Veronica Myers, Patrick Pelz, Justin Penov, Brian Peterman, Chad Redmon, Claudia Sanchez, Emily Schiller, JD Shipman, Peter Skow, Isabel Stauffer, Russell Sublette, Doug Velek, Queta Moore Watson, Emily Wiskera, and Tamara Wootton Forsyth, whose tireless guidance, support, and expertise immensely strengthened the project. Hilde Nelson was instrumental to the overall project with her intelligent advice and meticulous coordination.

We are thankful to those who have enriched this project by sharing research, lending advice, or assisting in numerous other ways. We wish to particularly acknowledge Julian Cox, Brendan Dugan, Dena Rash Guzman, Scott Kahn, Raffi Katchadourian, Phillip Meyer, Chris Moore, John Pardee IV, Peter Shear, Michelle Wong, and John Yau.

Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, with major support provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. Exhibition support is provided by Christie’s, TWO × TWO for AIDS and Art, and the DMA’s Contemporary Art Initiative. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture. To the generous lenders we extend heartfelt thanks for their willingness to part with their works and to see them in new, exciting juxtaposition at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Finally, we dedicate this endeavor to Matthew Wong, in thanks for the beauty he brought into the world and for his all-encompassing and probing approach to painting, poetry, and criticism. Most of all, we honor his building of community, the friendships he fostered, and the dialogues he cultivated. It is in this communal spirit that we are proud to present this exhibition of his work.

Agustín Arteaga
The Eugene McDermott Director
Dallas Museum of Art~

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