I woke up after a beautiful nightmare. 10:00 on my watch, displayed in brick layers.My head is heavy, like a hangover. I just saw a dream about graffiti, New York trains, and friends who wake up at 5:00 and go paint words on metal wagons. That is what Martin Wong was doing with his friends and it stayed with me, somehow I dreamed inside it.
Ten years ago I would never tell you that I could be such a big fan of the work of a Chinese American painter from New York, someone connected to graffiti and gay communities, someone living in strange corners of the city. I would never tell you that I could love an artist like this.
Ten years ago I was still forming my idea of what an artist is. Probably someone from the deep past. Like my early obsession with Leonardo da Vinci and his mix of engineering and painting. What I did not know then is that Martin Wong would sink into my consciousness so deeply that my nightmares and my romantic dreams would be built from his walls, his sign language, his rounded hands, his windows. I believe Martin wanted this – to live inside people’s heads. Maybe this was his real goal?
Now, today, I have high standards for artists I call my favourites. One strange rule is that they are usually already dead. Another is that they must build their own language obsessively. Everything else is secondary.
Colour matters less. Technique is not the main thing. Obsession is mandatory. Artists fully submerged in their own world are the greatest.
I first met Martin’s work in 2023 at Camden Art Centre, during his large solo exhibition – and only now I can summarise my thoughts about him. I walked in without preparation and without expectations. I was with a guy who invited me for this show and I barely knew him (I felt like I want to be alone, not talk at all). But then I started noticing details and I didn’t hear anyone else. I kept looking, I saw brick walls, I saw sign language, I saw prisons, and so on… Most importantly, I saw an incredible skill joined with obsession.
So I read everything about Martin’s life. Explorations, strange jobs. A skinny cowboy (that’s his favourite ‘costume’) walking through New York. Painting in a small apartment, objects (he loved ceramics) on the floor, random books (and comics, and encyclopaedias), calligraphy, constellation charts, ideas buried under layers of paint. I could relate to all these themes he explored. His paintings are full of symbols, messages, and poetic fragments. Also sad story about his life: HIV, paintings that did not sell, a broken heart. Classic Van Gogh story, I thought at first – in five or ten years he will be everywhere, every museum, every small airport bookshop.
He inspires me because I can related to the contradiction in his life: a social realist and a visionary dreamer. A lonely poet and at the same time a professional anthropologist! A master and a ‘loser’ at once.
A painstaking craftsman and a lover of kitsch, as described about him in one of the articles from ‘Human Instamatic’, that I read again and again. The book traces his life through work. Early portraits. Ceramics studies. Firefighters as one of the first subjects. Yellow and brown Californian colours at the beginning. In this material I could clearly see visual consistency. Not style as decoration, but language built slowly and stubbornly.
Many details shock you at first: a brick dildo embedded in a wall, prisoners’ eyes looking through a small cell window, poetry crafted word by word with almost malicious care. When you start reading the paintings, they become even more intense. The density grows.
Almost forgot this details which surprised me – the painted frames. A quiet conversation with Renaissance and medieval artists. Ownership is claimed inside the object. The painting does not end at the image. I understand why you did it, Martin.
I feel something uncomfortable writing this – this note is not even structured as I planned. To be honest, I am still not fully sure why I am so obsessed with his work. Maybe because he placed himself in art history with such precision and bravery that the scale is hard to measure? Or I’m just mirroring him too much?
Anyway, when I grow up, I want to be like him.
