Matthew Wong: The New World

New York: Cheim & Read, 2019. Hardcover. New / Sealed (sealed in publisher's wrap; lower corners bumped & creased, lower spine end bumped & creased). white boards w/ black illustration & printing. unpaginated, approx 100+ pgs. " This is Wong's second solo exhibition at the gallery, which follows Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013-2017. The works in Paintings from Los Angeles 2016 differ markedly from those widely exhibited during the artist's lifetime. Instead of the blues which have become virtually synonymous with the artist in the public imagination, the palette and textures of these paintings reflect the super-heated atmosphere of Los Angeles, where a teeming metropolis collides with the harsh natural landscape: the Pacific ocean, mountains, and desert. Wong, a Canadian artist who was born in Toronto in 1984 and lived and worked in Edmonton, made these paintings in 2016 during a three-month stay in Los Angeles, the last stop on a visit which included New York and Michigan. The brushwork is loaded and expressionistic, revealing a distinct and compelling aspect of Wong's practice. These works seem to combine the color of the French Fauvists with the alienated sensuality of the German expressionist Die Brücke group, like Erich Heckel or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and the plaintive directness of Georges Rouault with the streetwise grittiness of the East Village scene of the 1980s..."--WorldCat.