Martin Wong: Human Instamatic - Tapa dura

Martin Wong: Human Instamatic explores the work of Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946-1999), tracing his transition from an introspective youth in San Francisco painting haunting self-portraits, to his subsequent engagements with communities in the Bay Area and later New York City. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Wong became an active participant in the thriving countercultural movement in California, where he collaborated with the radical queer performance groups Cockettes and Angels of Light. In 1978, Wong moved to New York where he could play a pivotal role in the arts scene throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Wong's work of that period captures the vibrancy of the Lower East Side: a resilient, multi-ethnic, bohemian community grappling with an advanced process of gentrification. Diagnosed with HIV in 1994, Wong returned to San Francisco where he lived under the care of his parents until he died in 1999.

Martin Wong: Human Instamatic offers a comprehensive overview of Martin Wong's career through a number of scholarly essays, archival material, and an interview with Wong made accessible to the public for the first time.

Martin Wong: Human Instamatic is in partnership with the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Martin Wong: Human Instamatic explores the paintings of Martin Wong, a collection that fuses the kitsch and decorative with a gritty realism. Martin Wong was a painter whose vision is among the lasting legacies of New York's East Village art scene of the 1980s and a precursor of the identity-driven work of the 1990s. Known as the "human instamatic" for his rapid portrait painting skills, which he offered for $7.50 a painting, Martin Wong was encouraged to move from the San Francisco Bay Area art scene to New York. In the heyday of the East Village, where the local styles tended toward graffiti art, neo-Expressionism and late Conceptualism, Wong carved out a territory of his own. His art was as culturally complex as his appearance, which was usually distinguished by a Fu Manchu mustache and a cowboy hat. Wong had a degree in ceramics and expertise in such diverse areas as Asian painting, calligraphy and decorative arts. An active collector of everything from American antiques to the gift shop souvenirs of San Francisco's Chinatown, he eventually donated his extensive collection of graffiti art to the Museum of the City of New York. Wong's estate is administered by the PPOW Gallery in New York. Martin Wong: Human Instamatic is in partnership with the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Authored by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Director of Curatorial and Education Programs, and Yasmin Ramirez, critic and scholar.