Tucked away at a small institution in Chicago is an eye-opening show by beloved New York artist Martin Wong, a self-taught artist of Chinese-American descent who recorded a bombed-out Lower East Side and heroized his Asian and Latino contemporaries who lived there. “Martin Wong: Chinatown USA,” at Wrightwood 659, also happens to include 11 never-before-exhibited paintings—a dozen if you include the never-before-seen back side of one large canvas. It’s a rare treat for lovers of the artist’s work.
The first monographic Wong institutional show in almost a decade features over 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs. It focuses on Wong’s investigations into the two Chinatowns he knew: San Francisco’s, where he was raised, and New York, where he lived from 1978 to 1994. One painting depicts in duplicate the distinctive pagoda-style building at 241 Canal Street in New York, while others represent pop icons like Bruce Lee and Peking opera performer Mei Lanfang. Cultural events like Chinese New Year parades come in for consideration, as do communities beloved to Wong, like graffiti painters and Puerto Rican poets.
The Chicago exhibition was complemented by a show, “Martin Wong: Popeye,” which closed June 6 at his New York gallery, P.P.O.W. His first New York solo in a decade, it was anchored by a suite of cutout paintings on wood representing Popeye in a red-brick pattern, motorized so that the cartoon character flexes his arms. (It was his sixth solo with the gallery; his 2024 and 2021 shows there were two-person exhibitions.)
“Martin Wong: Popeye,” at PPOW Gallery, New York, 2026.
Ian D. Edquist, courtesy PPOW
P.P.O.W also unveiled a monumental painting by Wong, Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo), 1982, at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2025; it had been unseen for nearly four decades, and bore a $1.6 million asking price. That painting, dealing with his Asian American heritage and including a rare portrait of Wong’s mother and stepfather, went to the Broad Museum and is included in the Wrightwood show.
Martin Wong, Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo) 1982.
Courtesy PPOW Gallery, New York.
The opening gallery at Wrightwood 659, which introduces a number of the artist’s favored themes, like urban life, astrology, American Sign Language, graffiti, and skateboarding, brings an embarrassment of riches, with terrific works on loan from major institutions; lenders include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, the Broad, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
As independent curator Yasufumi Nakamori explains in the sumptuous catalog for the show, Wong was hesitant to show the Chinatown paintings, partly for fear of being stereotyped and partly because his parents discouraged him from showing them. Well into his career, Zully Adler writes in the catalog, Wong mounted the 1992 show “Chinatown USA” in New York. “This is an American Chinatown,” he told a reporter. “It has a touristy, kitschy feel. A pop feeling, and it’s not like anything in real China.” Wong brought fortune cookies to the opening, one of them reading “You will get an uncontrollable urge to buy a painting.”
The Wrightwood show has the added charm of being able to display some of Wong’s lovingly painted works depicting brick walls, on brick walls of its own, in its remarkable Tadao Ando–designed building. It’s a great touch.
“Martin Wong: Chinatown USA,” organized by independent curator Yasufumi Nakamori with Wrightwood 659 assistant curator Ashley Janke, is on view at Wrightwood 659, 659 West Wrightwood Avenue, through July 18, 2026.
Here are six of the never-before-exhibited works.
