July 1, 2023–February 14, 2024

Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances

Matthew Wong achieved resounding critical acclaim during his short career, which spanned just six years, between 2013, when he began painting and drawing in earnest, and his death in 2019 at the age of 35. In that time, he created a visual language uniquely his own, becoming known for vibrant and psychologically charged landscape paintings in a wide range of styles.

From his rarely seen early works to iconic later paintings, the artist’s incredible talent is on full display in the first museum retrospective and first US museum exhibition devoted to the self-taught artist. Featuring approximately 40 works in a variety of mediums including oil, ink, watercolor, and gouache, it offers the first formal account of how Wong adeptly synthesized many inspirations—from the Fauvists to 17th-century Qing period ink painters to contemporaries he admired—to create a visual language uniquely his own.

See the full scope of works Wong created in a short period of time and reflect on his persistent pursuit to capture humanity’s relationship to the world beyond the physical realm.

Henry and Lois Foster Gallery (Gallery 158)

a small, dark figure sits on a hillside and stares off in the distance at a house in front of a large green mountain that scales upward and out of frame.

A bright orange forest under the glow of a full moon.

A path winds through a forest under the blue light of night.

A black-and-white portrait drawing with black lines across the subject's face; set against a forest backdrop.

A small town on a hill with a bare, white tree in the foreground

A snow-capped mountain sits at the end of a serpentine path in the woods and against the backdrop of a blue-and-yellow sky.

A mother and child walk in a field covered with flowers.

A diptych of two portraits with obstructed faces.

A small house at the end of a path in the woods sits under the falling rain and the glow of the moon.

Two people walk along a black-sand beach at sunset.

Matthew Wong, See you on the Other Side, 2019

Matthew Wong, The Realm of Appearances, 2018

Matthew Wong, River at Night, 2018

Matthew Wong, Untitled, 2015

Matthew Wong, Old Town, 2017

Matthew Wong, Unknown Pleasures, 2019

Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Monita and Raymond Wong in memory of their son, Matthew Wong, 2020. © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.