Over the years, there have been a few places I called “home”. And since I just spent almost a month back in the motherland, Croatia, seeing familiar domestic sights made me think of Matthew Wong’s current Venice exhibition, which I visited back in May. Organized by Matthew Wong Foundation at Palazzo Tiepolo Passi San Polo until November 1st, Interiors features some 40 of the late artist’s works capturing that “magic” of something common, mundane, everyday, becoming precious, intimate, and charged.
There is something acutely special and personal about experiencing and recognizing such moments. A door slightly ajar letting in a peculiar light, a curtain casting shadow over a piece of furniture, particular colors and patterns creating almost a kaleidoscopic effect in the corner of the eye. Such unremarkable sights, experienced many times in different contexts, transform into metaphors or signifiers of something bigger, something private, something hard to articulate. Just as the flavor of Proust’s tea-soaked madeleines unlocks a flood of vivid, forgotten childhood memories, these vistas bring back events, emotions, and moments that took place around them. Because of that, these snapshots of domestic nooks are not seen as exact, detailed, or well-proportioned images, but as instances or representations of an atmosphere, an emotion.
Wong certainly wasn’t so interested in capturing the scene in its appearance, but its chronically melancholic, occasionally ominous mood. Developing ways to convey certain elements on the go, particularly the light or depth effects, these vistas feel intimate and honest before anything else. Whether through flowing gestures, intricate mark-making, or gentle caresses of the brush, these oils on canvas and acrylics or gouaches on paper seem to offer both the view and the feel. One is easy to recognize, while the other, the subdued one, reveals itself slowly. Essentially simple in what they actually depict, these interior memories hold onto the precariousness that saturates the home. —Saša Bogojev
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