Martin Wong
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
This exhibition surveys the career of Chinese American painter Martin Wong (1946–1999), from his early years painting street portraits in Northern California—where he dubbed himself the “Human Instamatic”—to his role in New York’s gritty downtown art scene in the 1970s and 1980s and his late work in San Francisco before his untimely death from AIDS.
Wong was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up near San Francisco’s Chinatown. After a year at UC Berkeley, he studied ceramics at Humboldt State University in Eureka. During the 1970s, dividing his time between Eureka and San Francisco, he made scroll poems in idiosyncratic calligraphy and designed sets for psychedelic experimental theater groups the Cockettes and Angels of Light.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Wong’s work changed and blossomed after he moved to New York in 1978. While living openly as a gay man on the Lower East Side, then a poor immigrant neighborhood with a large Latino population, he quickly became part of a burgeoning arts scene. He formed a close relationship with Puerto Rican writer Miguel Piñero, with whom he sometimes collaborated, and befriended several young graffiti artists, collecting their work and eventually donating it to the Museum of the City of New York. During his New York years Wong made paintings of his environment—brick buildings, storefronts, interiors—as well as depictions of prison life and firemen, for whom he had an erotic fascination. Often, he added sign language pictograms and headlines from the sensationalist tabloid Weekly World News. His highly distinctive style, which combines obsessive attention to detail with fantastical elements, has been described as visionary realism.
In 1994 Wong contracted AIDS and returned to his family in San Francisco; he was cared for by his mother, with whom he shared a passion for collecting everything from fine art to souvenir trinkets. He continued to paint and, in a stylistic departure, made highly detailed studies of exotic cacti in his mother’s garden.
Martin Wong
La Iglesia de Dios, 1986
acrylic on canvas
96 1/2 x 158 ins.
245.1 x 401.3 cm
Martin Wong
Orion, 1990-91
acrylic on canvas on board
62 x 36 x 3 1/2 ins.
157.5 x 91.4 x 8.9 cm
Martin Wong
Top Cat, 1990
acrylic on canvas
21 x 30 ins.
53.3 x 76.2 cm
Martin Wong
Attorney Street: Handball Court with Autobiographical Poem by Pinero, 1982-84
oil on canvas
35 1/2 x 48 ins.
90.17 x 121.92 cm
Martin Wong
Self-portrait, 1993
acrylic on canvas
40 ins. diameter
101.6 cm diameter
Martin Wong
Brainwashing Cult Cons Top T.V. Stars: Networks Implicated, 1981
acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 ins.
76.2 x 101.6 cm
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Installation View) BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA, September 20 – December 10, 2017. Photo: Johanna Arnold.