Two dozen never-before-exhibited ink drawings by the late painter Matthew Wong will debut at Cheim & Read in New York. The graphic, black-and-white drawings represent just a small sampling of works the artist left behind when he died by suicide in 2019 at the age of 35.
It was Wong’s luminous oil paintings—vibrant, mysterious, melancholy landscapes—that won him attention, and made him one of the signal artists of the decade. He has made 1000 paintings and drawings. Only a fraction of that material has been seen publicly, and his ink works remain little known.
On May 5, Cheim & Read will open an exhibition focused on Wong’s efforts in that unforgiving medium—just ink, water, and rice paper—at its Chelsea gallery.
“Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013–2017” includes 24 pieces that have never before been exhibited. It’s a collaboration with the Matthew Wong Foundation, a nonprofit founded by the Toronto-born artist’s parents, Monita and Raymond Wong, to preserve his legacy and pursue philanthropic work.
Last year, Wong’s parents gave a sprawling ink 2016 work, more than six feet tall, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Suggesting a free-floating world within another world, it is potently surreal, and yet tender and intimate in the way it emerges from just simple brushstrokes: black liquid on white paper. “It is as if you can feel the particles in the air,” Cheim said of Wong’s ink works. “The space between the interior and the exterior dissolves—a kind of psychological pantheism presents itself.”