CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/20/2019

NEW! Matthew Wong: Blue

The small gouache Untitled (2018) is reproduced from Matthew Wong: Blue, the new release from Karma, published to accompany the gallery's current posthumous exhibition of Wong's work. Planned with the artist before his death in October of this year, both the book and the exhibition reveal "a marked tension between beauty and melancholy," according to Hyperallergic reviewer, Julia Friedman. "Melancholy is the most pronounced psychology in Blue, perhaps because of the colloquial meaning of the title, Wong’s recent suicide, and the subsequent press coverage which described his lifelong struggle with depression. Yet Karma is careful not to inject additional pathos into this exhibition’s presentation… However, as a viewer it’s hard to keep the artist’s biography and work separate. This is particularly true of the small gouache works, which lack the drama of the larger canvases and feel more sadly intimate: moonlight shining onto an empty bed seems to suggest absence after death; a curtain blowing to the side evokes a spirit passing; even icebergs, floating in a serene sea, project an icy loneliness."