The self-taught Canadian painter Matthew Wong (1984–2019) became known for his richly textured, dreamlike landscapes steeped in nostalgic melancholia while evoking a vibrant, boundless wonder. Alternating between wet and dry factures, his paintings juxtapose large geometric planes with areas of intricately dotted and patterned brushstrokes. Wong’s work synthesizes the lineages of Eastern and Western art history; his intense, compulsive mark-making recalls the dotwork of Georges Seurat and Yayoi Kusama, while his radical compression and reconfiguration of three-dimensional space harks back to the visual systems of Chinese scroll painting, among other points of reference. Wong aimed to document the wanderings of memory through his enigmatic compositions.
Like many of Wong’s semi-abstract landscapes, The Jungle (2017) was painted in a palette of kaleidoscopic hues that nod to the painterly traditions of post-impressionists such as Édouard Vuillard, Paul Sérusier, and André Derain. As is typical of Wong’s work, the present composition includes a solitary human figure who functions as a sort of psychical traveler—a metaphor for the artist’s probing curiosity and profound interior reflection. The present work will be included in the artist’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
