Untitled, 1986

Miami Beach 2019
Untitled

P.P.O.W

Painting
acrylic on canvas, foam
169.5 x 164.5 x 15.9 (厘米)
66.8 x 64.8 x 6.3 (吋)
Martin Wong (b. 1946, Portland, OR; d. 1999, San Francisco, CA) is best known for deploying a unique visual lexicon of stacked bricks, crumbling tenements, constellations and hand signals to passionately render urban life. With "Picture Show" at Semaphore Gallery in 1986, Wong confronted the gentrification of New York City’s Lower East Side in a series of life-size paintings that depict gated facades. In his artist statement, Wong wrote, “I wanted to focus in close on some of the endless layers of conflict and confinement that have us all bound together in this life without possibility of parole.” P·P·O·W will present one work from the series, "Untitled (Poetry Storefront)", 1986, which documents the Nuyorican Poets’ Café on East 6th Street, founded by Miguel Algarían and Mickey Piñero. This seminal work will be exhibited alongside an untitled, undated work that exemplifies Wong’s use of stacked bricks and sign language as both metaphor and motif. Rigorously painted on a heart-shaped canvas, this brick wall bears a blue ASL plaque that reads “For Sale”. Wong was active in the performance art groups, The Cockettes and Angels of Light before moving to New York in 1978. He exhibited for two decades at notable downtown galleries including EXIT ART, Semaphore and P·P·O·W, among others. Wong died in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Bronx Museum of The Arts, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. In 1998, Wong had a one person at the New Museum, New York. "Human Instamatic", a comprehensive retrospective, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts, New York, in 2015; Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio in 2016; and UC Berkeley Art Museum in 2017.