U + ME
Paintings and Poetry by Milton Resnick and Matthew Wong
Curated by Alex Paul Chapin
September 8, 2023 - February 10, 2024
Matthew Wong
Act of Faith, 2016
Acrylic on paper
12 x 9 inches
Milton Resnick
Untitled, 1996
Oil on canvas
36 x 40 inches
The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation presents U + ME: Milton Resnick and Matthew Wong, an exhibition of paintings and poetry, in association with the Matthew Wong Foundation and curated by Alex Paul Chapin. The exhibition will be on view from September 8, 2023 - February 10, 2024.
U + ME: Milton Resnick and Matthew Wong explores an unfounded relationship between two artist’s poetry and figurative paintings. Mostly seen behind glass are works on paper spanning the last decade of each artists respective lives. Also included in the exhibition are oil on canvas works from both Resnick and Wong, as well as poetry excerpts from the same period in which the works were completed.
Working directly with source material from the Resnick Passlof Foundation and additional support from both Matthew Wong Foundation and Cheim & Read Gallery, curator and Foundation Manager, Alex Paul Chapin has spent the past 16 months piecing together a visual narrative of coincidence and an uncanny similitude of expression and discipline in regard to painting and poetry between these two artists.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue designed by the curator which includes 46 color plate reproductions, 14 poems, 2 b/w portraits, curatorial statement and an introductory essay by John Yau.
Matthew Wong
The Inner Circle, 2016
Acrylic on paper
12 x 9 inches
Milton Resnick
Judgment of Paris, 1990
Gouache on paper
18 x 24 1/4 inches
“Although Resnick began writing poetry in 1961, after he established himself as an abstract artist who removed autobiographical traces and the personal from his work, the poems he wrote late in his life complement his figurative paintings. A self-interlocutor, who had interior conversations with himself, mostly about art and his life, Resnick’s poems convey his ambitions and anxieties, as well as reveal a vulnerability that is not found in his abstract paintings. Thinking about how Resnick’s late work must have reaffirmed his paintings, particularly their subject matter, we can begin to see Wong’s work in a larger, different, and more nuanced way. In retrospect, what has become clear is that Wong drew inspiration from a wide range of artists, and that Resnick was one of them.”
