MATTHEW WONG - VINCENT VAN GOGH. Letzte Zuflucht Malerei

What remains when words are no longer enough? For Matthew Wong, painting was not just a means of expression but a final refuge – a space where his inner and outer worlds converged, where longing, restlessness, and pain were transformed into color. Vincent van Gogh knew this struggle. Both artists painted against the unspeakable, creating works that capture life in all its contradictions: radiant, charged with energy, yet infused with melancholy and existential weight.

Our film delves deep into this artistic kinship, following the Albertina’s groundbreaking exhibition that presents Wong’s work in Europe for the first time – placed in direct dialogue with van Gogh, his artistic guiding star. The intense colors, the shimmering light, the deep nocturnal blues: these are paintings that do more than imagine places of longing. They reveal an attempt to situate oneself in a world that remained elusive for both artists.

Albertina General Director Ralph Gleis and Albertina Modern Director Angela Stief lead us through this encounter between two outsiders of art history – two painters who searched for belonging in their works and found in painting a sanctuary that life denied them. Their art presents a world both comforting and unstable, full of beauty and fractures alike.

This film is an invitation to look deeper. Into art. Into life. Into the souls of two artists for whom painting became the only bridge between solitude and the world, and into the artistic communication between modern and contemporary painting.

https://www.albertina.at

Interviewee: Ralp Gleis, Angela Stief
Artworks by: Matthew Wong, Vincent van Gogh

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German
Subtitles: English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Helmut Feier, Michael Rottmann
Production country: Austria, Vienna