Inside the fair’s most intimate section, visionary galleries stage boundary-breaking dialogues
Martin Wong – P·P·O·W
Packed full of symbols of Queer identity and the sociopolitical dynamics of 1980s New York, many paintings by Martin Wong (1946–1999) share a backdrop of his most recognizable motif: red brick. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that Wong’s formal artistic training began with clay. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University in California in the 1960s, where he developed a sculptor’s sensitivity to surface and form. Though he subsequently abandoned the medium when a museum rejected one of his works for containing glitter, clay shaped his relationship with the earthy tones and layered textures that can be seen in his paintings. P·P·O·W will showcase works from the ’60s and ’70s exploring how one medium informed the other.