Matthew Wong (; March 8, 1984 – October 2, 2019) was a Canadian artist. Self-taught as a painter, Wong received critical acclaim for his work before his death in 2019 at the age of 35.

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied at ...

, co-chief art critic at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', has praised Wong as "one of the most talented painters of his generation."

Biography

Wong was born in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

in 1984. His family emigrated to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

when Wong was seven. At the age of fifteen, his family returned to Canada, in part to support the treatment of Wong's autism. Wong then attended the

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, completing a degree in cultural anthropology in 2007. He returned to Hong Kong the same year. In 2010 he enrolled at the

City University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is a world-class public research university located in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1984 as City Polytechnic of Hong Kong and became a fully accredited university in 1994. Currently, CityU is ...

School of Creative Media, receiving a

Master of Fine Arts degree Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

in photography in 2012. Wong suffered from depression throughout his adult life. He died by suicide in 2019 at age 35 in

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

Art career

Wong's creative work began with experiments with photography in 2009 and continued during his time as a student of photography at City University in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied with the idea of becoming a photographer, in 2014 Wong told ''Neoteric Magazine'' that "towards the end of my degree I felt I had gained no real skills or prospects that could take me forward in the professional world." In 2012 he began experimenting with drawing. He began painting landscapes in 2014. In 2016 he returned to Canada, settling in Edmonton. Wong would post his paintings to

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. Through this, he met the curator and director of White Columns Gallery Matthew Higgs. Wong would go on to exhibit at galleries in New York and Hong Kong. Curator

Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for '' New York'' magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for ''The Village Voice'', he received the Pu ...

called Wong's 2018 solo exhibition at Karma Gallery “one of the most impressive solo New York debuts I’ve seen in a while.” Due to their scarcity in the open market, Wong's works have attracted interest on the auction market. In 2020, a small watercolor on paper simply called ''Untitled'' was sold for four times its original estimate price after attracting a number of bids. His first large painting available in an auction, ''The Realm of Appearances'', was sold in July 2020 for US$1.82 million, twenty times its original estimate. In December 2020, a painting called ''River at Dusk'' was sold for $4.86M, four times its original estimate. His Edmonton studio remains untouched.

Solo exhibitions

* 2021 ''Blue View'',

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Beve ...

, Toronto *2019 ''Blue'', Karma, New York * 2019 ''Day by Night'', Massimo De Carlo, Hong Kong * 2018 Karma, New York *2018 galerie frank elbaz, Paris, France * 2015 ''Pulse of the Land'', Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong

Collections

His work is included in public collections such as the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...

, the

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

, the Aishti Foundation and the Estée Lauder Collection.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wong, Matthew 1984 births 2019 deaths 2019 suicides Artists from Toronto University of Michigan alumni 21st-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters Canadian expatriates in Hong Kong Place of death missing Painters who committed suicide Canadian expatriates in the United States Canadian landscape painters Alumni of the City University of Hong Kong Canadian male artists Canadian contemporary artists Suicides in Alberta Hong Kong painters Canadian people of Chinese descent 21st-century Canadian male artists