Martin Wong’s Vast Interests Go On View at Wrightwood 659
“Martin Wong: Chinatown USA” marks the first monographic museum exhibition featuring the late artist since 2017
Martin Wong never went to China, and didn’t speak Chinese. But as a Chinese-American who grew up in San Francisco and was later a key figure of the downtown New York painting scene in the 1980s and 1990s, he knew the Chinatown areas of those cities well, and was interested in playing with the traditional representation of Asian people and Asian culture in his work.
Now there’s a gorgeous show at the jewel-box museum Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, “Martin Wong: Chinatown USA,” the first monographic museum exhibition of his work since 2017. It opens April 17 and runs until July 18.
Though his life was cut short, as it was for so many artists, by AIDS, the legacy of Wong (1946–99) is stronger now than ever.
He is frequently cited by contemporary artists as a touchstone—both for his complex image making and his fearless take on identity—as well as by collectors, with his auction record set in 2024 by the sale of Portrait of Mikey Piñero at Ridge Street and Stanton (1985), a work in the Wrightwood show, for $1.62 million.
The new Wrightwood exhibition features more than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs, including some of his most famous works, like his tondo-shaped Self-Portrait from 1993, complete with sly expression and cowboy hat, and 1988’s Big Heat, a vertical cityscape of distressed New York brick buildings with two firefighters at the bottom, kissing. The show spreads in an uncrowded way through two of the museum’s three exhibition floors.
Giving me a sneak preview of the exhibition, Wrightwood’s new director, Mariah Keller, tells me that “it fits our mission of showing LGBTQ artists,” as seen in last year’s blockbuster there, “The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939.”
The museum was founded in 2018 by the entrepreneur Fred Eychaner and Dan Whittaker, an architectural historian, in a former apartment building on Chicago’s north side, brilliantly renovated and reconceived by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
The space flatters works like the Broad Art Foundation’s triptych Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo) (1982), one of many significant loans Wrightwood was able to acquire for the show, curated by Yasufumi Nakamori.
Wong was profoundly invested in the idea of doubling, as in Canal Street (1992), with two images of the famous pagoda-style building at 291 Canal Street in New York, with his face inserted between them. In both Co-dependent No More (ca. 1992) and I.M.U U.R.2 (1978), two nearly identical figures are smashed together in a kind of doppelganger embrace.
Wong’s diverse interests all made it into his work. He was not deaf, but he knew and used American Sign Language, with some of the signs making it into his paintings. Although he was not technically a graffiti artist, something of the bold surfaces of those works made it into his own; he also collected graffiti pieces by others, a few of which are in this show.
Wong loved to use the red bricks found all over his Loisada/Chinatown milieu as literal and figurative building blocks for his works, and they may have inspired him to build up the surface of some works with a rough texture.
Those bricks are all over a concurrent New York show of his work, “Martin Wong: Popeye,” April 18–May 30 at P.P.O.W. gallery in downtown New York, not too far away from where Wong once lived. For decades, P.P.O.W. has been a careful steward of Wong’s legacy as the representative of his estate.
The Popeye show delves into Wong’s interest in comics and tattoo subculture. In Untitled (Little Lulu and Tubby) (ca. 1989), the 1930s cartoon characters are rendered as fraternal twins made of bricks, with doubled rabbit-like figures surrounding them. In Untitled (Alfred E. Neuman) (ca. 1979-80), the iconic, freckled MAD Magazine character is seen in a goofy, affectionate closeup.
Always witty and playful, Wong even created some kinetic works, as seen in this show; in Oy! Veh (1991), a huge Popeye figure that seems to be made of red bricks, the figure’s muscly arms can move up and down via a hidden motor. It’s one of several paintings on plywood in the P.P.O.W. show.
Even Wong’s many devoted followers will find something new in these exhibitions. One dramatic example of that at Wrightwood is the 1985 work Untitled (Silver Storefront). It’s two-sided, with a recto and a verso, and the verso has never been publicly exhibited—an enticing discovery indeed.
The storefront of the title is what has been on view before, an image of one of those pull-down metal grates familiar to city dwellers. But on the other side—and covered by some wooden stretchers of the kind found on many paintings, usually unseen—is a complex scene of figures in a Chinese-style interior.
The figure in the lower left corner of the newly revealed image is also seen in the triptych Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo), and it is thought to be a metaphorical self-portrait of Wong. He’s holding a painter’s palette, with a row of color options and brushes sticking out.
Without a doubt, Wong painted himself right into art history.
“Martin Wong: Chinatown USA,” is on view at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago from April 17 through July 18, while “Martin Wong: Popeye,” is on view at P.P.O.W. gallery in New York from April 18 through May 30.