ZURICH.- From 20 September 2024 to 26 January 2025, the Kunsthaus explores the artistic and biographical parallels between the Chinese-Canadian painter Matthew Wong and Vincent van Gogh. For the first time in Switzerland, the presentation focuses on some 35 imaginary landscapes and interiors by Matthew Wong, complemented by around a dozen selected van Gogh masterpieces.

‘I see myself in him. The impossibility of belonging in this world’. Chinese- Canadian painter Matthew Wong (1984–2019), who said these words about his great inspiration Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), was one of the most promising artists of his generation. This presentation, which sets up a dialogue with van Gogh, is the first major retrospective of Wong’s work in Europe.

AN EXPLOSION OF COLOUR

Dynamic and vividly colourful, Wong’s painting revolved primarily around landscapes of expressive lyricism. Like van Gogh, he was a self-taught artist who came to the medium relatively late, producing his first drawing at the age of 27. The speed with which he created an oeuvre of immense diversity and breadth in the eight years that followed is therefore especially remarkable. In the course of that brief period as a painter and draughtsman, he absorbed an astonishing amount of art history as he sought to find his place in the ‘greater dialogue between artists over time’. He drew on both Euro-American and Chinese art, taking his cue not just from Vincent van Gogh but also from painters such as Henri Matisse, Shitao, Gustav Klimt, Yayoi Kusama and Alex Katz. Against the backdrop of those influences, Wong created imaginary landscapes and interiors that contained numerous stylistic allusions to other artists while remaining exceptionally personal and original.

KINDRED SPIRITS

Van Gogh’s influence is especially evident in Wong’s highly expressive use of colour and painting style. The direct and unfiltered way in which Wong expresses his state of mind through his works is similarly pronounced in van Gogh. Yet there are also striking parallels in their life stories. Both faced mental health issues: Wong experienced depression at an early age, suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and autism, and took his own life in 2019 at the age of 35. As far as we can tell from what is currently known, van Gogh experienced psychotic seizures associated with anxiety and hallucinations. He was only two years older when in, 1890, he committed suicide in Auvers-sur-Oise north-west of Paris, aged 37.

AN OMNIPRESENT PICTORIAL COSMOS

The art-historical references that characterize Wong’s work reflect the unlimited access that 21st-century artists enjoy through social media. Wherever and whenever they are working, they always have centuries of art at their fingertips via a mobile phone. In this respect, Wong’s work is profoundly contemporary. At the same time, he also used very traditional painting materials such as ink on rice paper to give his works their unmistakeable form. This is just one of the ways in which Wong fuses today’s digitally connected world with traditional art history.

INVITING COMPARISONS

How does the Kunsthaus exhibition present the two artists in a way that brings ou their distinctive characteristics but also their commonalities? It adopts a dual approach, giving each artist his own space but linking their works together selectively. The exhibition architecture creates opportunities to compare Wong’s works with those of van Gogh without the need for immediate proximity. A number of large openings in the central partitions enable visitors to line the smaller van Goghs up visually with Wong’s mostly large-format paintings. These carefully arranged visual axes bring the pictorial worlds of Wong and van Gogh closer together without either’s work sacrificing its autonomy. Through such encounters, the exhibition highlights a defining element of the joint presentation: the two artists shared a dynamic and emotionally charged vision of painting in general and landscape painting in particular.

Indeed, van Gogh was perhaps the first landscape artist ever to place the emotional expression of his inner state at the centre of his paintings in the genre. Here, Matthew Wong follows his inspiration in his own unique fashion: his paintings, too, are replete with emotion, and both his painting style and his choice of motifs reflect his inner world.

The exhibition at the Kunsthaus covers an area of 750 m2 in two rooms of the Chipperfield building, and brings together some 35 works by Matthew Wong and around a dozen by van Gogh. Wong is represented by works from the last five years of his life – an especially important period for him as an artist – comprising mostly paintings along with a small number of drawings. The van Goghs on show date from the crucial last four years of the artist’s life, and include key works from his legendary final phases in Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise.