Matthew Wong

Matthew Wong studied at University of Michigan and City University of Hong Kong. Residence is recorded at Hong Kong and Edmonton. Work by Matthew Wong is recorded in the collections of Dallas Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• Name — Matthew Wong • Born — 8 March 1984 • Birthplace — Toronto, Ontario, Canada • Died — 2 October 2019 • Place of death — Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • Education — University of Michigan & City University of Hong Kong • Occupation — Painter

Wong was born in Toronto in 1984. His family emigrated to Hong Kong when he was seven. When he was fifteen, his family returned to Canada, in part to support the treatment of Wong's autism. Wong then attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, completing a degree in cultural anthropology in 2007. He returned to Hong Kong the same year. In 2010 he enrolled at the City University of Hong Kong School of Creative Media, receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography in 2012. Wong had Tourette syndrome and suffered from depression throughout his adult life. He died by suicide in 2019 at age 35 in Edmonton, Alberta.

Wong's creative work began with experiments with photography in 2009 and continued during his time as a student of photography at City University in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied with the idea of becoming a photographer, in 2014 Wong told Neoteric Magazine that "towards the end of my degree I felt I had gained no real skills or prospects that could take me forward in the professional world." In 2012 he began experimenting with drawing. He began painting landscapes in 2014. In 2016 he returned to Canada, settling in Edmonton. Wong posted his paintings to Facebook and attracted the attention of Matthew Higgs, curator and director of White Columns Gallery. Wong attained his first institutional recognition when the Dallas Museum of Art acquired his work, The West, in 2017. The DMA was the only museum to acquire a painting by Wong during his lifetime. Wong went on to exhibit at galleries in New York and Hong Kong. Critic Jerry Saltz called Wong's 2018 solo exhibition at Karma Gallery “one of the most impressive solo New York debuts I’ve seen in a while.” Due to their scarcity in the open market, Wong's works have attracted interest on the auction market. His Edmonton studio remains untouched.

• 2025 Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort, Albertina Museum, Vienna • 2024 Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam • 2023 The Realm of Appearances, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston • 2022 The Realm of Appearances, Dallas Museum of Art • 2021 Blue View, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto • 2019 Blue, Karma, New York • 2019 Day by Night, Massimo De Carlo, Hong Kong • 2018 Karma, New York • 2018 galerie frank elbaz, Paris, France • 2015 Pulse of the Land, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong

In 2020, a small watercolor on paper simply called Untitled was sold for four times its original estimate price after attracting a number of bids. His first large painting available in an auction, The Realm of Appearances, was sold in July 2020 for US$1.82 million, twenty times its original estimate. In December 2020, a painting called River at Dusk was sold for $4.86M, four times its original estimate.