Matthew Wong, River at Night, 2018 © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
王俊傑,《黑夜的河流》,2018年作 © 2023 Monita K.Y. Cheng

A n iridescent patchwork of colour, River at Dusk (2018) is a superlative masterwork by Matthew Wong, in which an emerald green river meanders down the heart of the canvas, snaking its way through the artist’s signature chromatic lollipop trees. An archetypal example teeming with Wong’s lively brushwork and impasto dabs and dots that dance across the canvas, River at Dusk captures the quintessential essence of dusk, expressing the artist’s unparalleled ability of depicting a familiar, specific moment in time whether it be Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, dawn, dusk or night. Wong created this work the year before his passing, employing saturated pigments of orange, yellows, purples and greens to achieve this precise time and feeling of twilight. That same year, the artist examined the same scene but at night, employing a darker palette of blue hues to achieve River at Night and realising a different, more melancholic mood. Towering two metres in height, River at Dusk envelops the viewer in Wong’s rich dreamscape of pointillist dots and impastoed dabs, deriving from memories and his mental database of artists and artworks that he encountered online, spanning centuries and genres.

GUSTAV KLIMT, FARMHOUSE WITH BIRCH TREES, 1903, PRIVATE COLLECTION
古斯塔夫·克里姆特,《農舍與樺樹》,1903年作,私人收藏

Born in Toronto in 1984, Wong lived alternately in Canada, Hong Kong and the United States, completing a degree in cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan in 2007 and an MFA in photography at the City University of Hong Kong in 2013. Around the same time, Wong began teaching himself to draw and paint, absorbing styles from masters Van Gogh, Matisse, Vuillard, Klimt and Bonnard, as well as from Chinese landscape painting and forms in the natural world.

Wong’s resulting artistic language synthesized endless artistic references in his own distinctive manner, articulating an enchantingly vulnerable, immersive and acutely alluring language rich in chromatic, spatial and psychological complexities.

Matthew Wong, Unknown Pleasures, 2019 © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York
王俊傑,《無名的愉悅》,2019年作 © 2023 Monita K.Y. Cheng
紐約現代藝術博物館藏

Wong’s unique vocabulary is characterized by intricate tactile surfaces, spirited abstracted strokes, ebulliently radiant palettes, and dramatic foreshortening that recall modernist spatial abstractions. Earnest, urgent, yet always sublimely graceful, the works are tinged with a melancholy that extends from the personal to the universal. Wong stated in 2018: “I would like my paintings to have something in them people across the spectrum can find things they identify with. I do believe that there is an inherent loneliness or melancholy to much of contemporary life, and on a broader level I feel my work speaks to this quality in addition to being a reflection of my thoughts, fascinations and impulses” (Maria Vogel, “Matthew Wong Reflects on the Melancholy of Life”, Art of Choice, November 2018).


俊傑的巔峰之作《黃昏的河流》(2018年作)色彩斑斕,翠綠色的河流蜿蜒流向畫面中心,兩旁種滿藝術家的標誌、棒棒糖造型的七彩樹木。本作是表現王俊傑擅用活潑筆觸的傑出典例,一抹抹厚塗顏料和色點在畫布上躍然舞動,完美展現黃昏景象的精髓,也顯示出王俊傑能深刻描繪特定時分的過人能力,不論是春夏秋冬,還是晨昏晝夜,他都能夠一一呈現。王俊傑在去世前一年繪畫本作,他運用橙、黃、紫、綠等飽和明亮的色彩,精準展現薄暮時分的氣氛。在同一年,王俊傑也創作了與本作構圖一致的晚間版本《黑夜的河流》,他運用各種深藍色調,營造與本作截然不同的沉鬱氣氛。高兩米的畫幅讓觀眾完全融入色彩豐富的夢幻景致中,王俊傑以色點和厚塗顏料建構的迷幻風景,取材自他從網上見過、橫跨不同年代門類的藝術家和作品。

王俊傑在1984年生於多倫多,多年來穿梭於加拿大、香港及美國之間。他在2007年畢業於密西根大學文化人類學系;2013年在香港城市大學獲得攝影藝術碩士學位。當時他開始自學繪畫,向梵高、馬蒂斯、維亞爾、克林姆及博納爾等大師學習,並師法中國山水畫和大自然的萬千形象。王氏的自學成果集合了對大量藝術風格的參考,但他自成一家,其藝術語言纖細脆弱,卻又異常迷人吸引。他的作品色彩豐富華麗,在空間感和心理暗示方面亦甚為複雜。

精緻的質感、充滿活力的抽象筆觸、熱情而鮮豔的色彩都是王俊傑的藝術特色,還有大幅縮短的前景,令人回想起現代主義藝術家對空間的抽象處理。他的作品流露出真實而逼切的情感,卻又不失優雅脫俗;畫中瀰漫的絲絲愁緒,彷彿從個人世界裡不斷延伸到外在的宇宙空間。王俊傑在2018年曾表示:「我希望我的作品能令各種各樣的人都能從中找到共鳴。我相信現代人的生活裡大多少不免寂寞和憂鬱。廣義地說,我覺得我的作品在回應這種感受,而不只是反映我個人的想法、迷戀和衝動。」(瑪利亞.沃格爾,〈王俊傑思考生命的愁緒〉,《Art of Choice》,2018年11月)。