News — Oct 12, 2023

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presents Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, a major survey exhibition of work by Chinese-American artist Martin Wong (1946–1999, US), spanning the breadth of his practice including painting, drawing and ceramic sculpture, as well as personal memorabilia.  

Martin Wong Malicious Mischief
Martin Wong, 'Malicious Mischief', 1991. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P.P.O.W, New York. © Martin Wong Foundation.

Martin Wong’s practice draws on and merges various visual languages, including Chinese iconography, portraiture, landscape, 'urban poetry', graffiti and sign language. Recognised for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies in the United States from 1970s to 1990s, he weaves together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification. Emerging as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time, his work offers an insight into decisive periods of recent United States history. In the role of an urban chronicler and a critical observer, Wong poetically portrays social realism while opening up spaces of beauty and inclusion. Within these spaces, the existing social relations of class, race, and sexual orientation can be reconsidered and reshaped.

Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief is presented in thematic rooms, guided by Wong’s own artistic biography, including: Wong’s multi-layered universe as seen through his early paintings, poems and sculptures made in the euphoric 1960s and early 1970s environments of San Francisco and Eureka, California, where he grew up as the only son of American-born Chinese parents; his iconic 1980s and 1990s paintings of a dilapidated New York City, made during his time on the Lower East Side; as well as his reminiscences on the imagery of the East and West Coast Chinatowns, made prior to his premature death from an HIV/AIDS-related illness.

Painting "Tell My Troubles to the Eight Ball (Eureka)"
Martin Wong, 'Tell My Troubles to the Eight Ball (Eureka)', 1978–1981. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P.P.O.W, New York. © Martin Wong Foundation.

The exhibition is named after a series of significant eponymous works from 1991–98 that broadly represent the concept of the “outlaw,” which Wong embraced and fetishised throughout his career.

Initiated by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and produced in collaboration with Camden Art Centre, London; Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, this European tour is the first extensive international display of the artist’s work outside of the United States. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive publication, co-published with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

Martin Wong, 'My Secret World 1978–1981', 1984. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P.P.O.W, New York. © Martin Wong Foundation.

Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief is initiated by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen and Agustín Pérez Rubio, and produced in collaboration with Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid; Camden Art Centre, London; and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art. The accompanying publication is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the German Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media. 

The exhibition has been supported by the Dutch government: an indemnity grant has been provided by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands on behalf of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.

For this exhibition the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is generously supported by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.