A 35-year-old Chinese-Canadian painter likened to Vincent van Gogh dies by suicide in Edmonton, Alberta. That was the inconceivable headline of October 2, 2019. The heartrending death of Matthew Wong for those who knew him was parried by the skepticism about his cultural importance for those who did not. Where is Edmonton, Alberta? For Matthew Wong it was a place of solitary productivity, a city where he knew no one, where he worked everyday from 4:00 in the morning until well into the night, for the last three years of his too-brief seven-year career as a painter. It was where he would have a nightly coffee and dessert, solo, at the Cactus Club. In Edmonton even the restaurants yearn to be somewhere far away, but Matthew Wong was there, in its nowhereness.
in Matthew Wong, Postcards, 2020
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