Exhibition: Close to Home: Thumbnail

In Close to Home, Adrian Kay Wong sets the stage with intimate paintings of a potently familiar space. These paintings offer glimpses of the outside through an ever-present window, as they unfold, double, and layer upon themselves, in an exacting re-examination of our domestic surroundings and the objects within them. 

Wong’s interiors are quiet spaces devoid of human inhabitants yet filled with evidence of their presence: a teacup left by the window in the morning, a wine glass at night, an orange left on the sill. Ushered by the chromatic shifts in light, Wong’s paintings transport us through a narrative and symbolic day, the clock on the wall and the persistent shift of the sun from east to west echoing time’s passing. 

These paintings represent the constancy and safety that the home space has represented during a time of external volatility, and meditate on the power of internal reflection as a catalyst to enact outward transformation. Although not by choice but by necessity, we have learned through recent times that true change begins close to home.

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Artists

  • Adrian Kay WongLos Angeles, CA

    Adrian Kay Wong (b. 1991) is a Los Angeles-based artist who depicts subtle narratives and interactions from the seemingly incidental moments of the everyday. Characterized by domestic interiors, motifs from daily life, and casts of light and shadow, his paintings balance an exchange of abstraction and representation, surface and depth, and organic and geometric form. Interwoven with his own memories, story, and cultural identity, Wong's paintings embody an intimacy and familiarity encapsulated within a stillness like a bated breath. In these vignettes of extended moments, Wong examines the coexisting dualities underlying our daily experiences. Notions such as intimacy and estrangement, transience and permanence, and belonging and isolation lie in the understated tensions inherent to the day-to-day. Structured carefully in measured compositions, Wong gives space to reflect on the personal dialogues often overlooked, yet intrinsic to self-discovery, empowerment, and reflection.

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Location

Uprise Art at 264 Canal Street #4W, New York

New York, NY

Dates

Jul 8, 2021-Aug 5, 2021