Party Scene, 2024, is a painterly ode to female friendship and, as described by artist Caroline Wong, ‘the pleasures of alcohol and cigarettes’. Drawn from a new body of work, Picnics and Parties, it is a continuation of the artist’s embrace of the vivid and decadent as expressed in recent series, Cats and Girls, Artificial Paradises, Hungry Women and Banquets.  Wong’s visual language mimics the buzzy energy and effervescent chaos of the best kind of party.

 

Lurid colours, iridescent hues and clashing patterns convey the transformative moment of intoxication and escapism. Wong’s signature lush painterliness is achieved through fizzy, hazy marks of oil pastel. Wong is interested in the ecstatic elevation of ordinary, fleeting moments, citing Pierre Bonnard’s melding of the decorative and the impressionistic as a key influence. She is also inspired by the female revellers of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jeanne Mammen, the tender portraits of women in bars and cafes by Lotte Laserstein, and the gaudy, glamorous depictions of the New Woman in 1920s Chinese calendar posters, known as yuefenpai.  In this way we can observe that Caroline Wong’s work is a lively and subversive riposte to traditional, restricted representations of East Asian women. For Wong, subverting these ideals is the essence of her practice, her work a joyful refusal of limits and a celebration of beauty in excess.

 

Caroline Wong, (b. 1986, Ipoh, Malaysia) lives and works in London. Wong graduated with an MA in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art School in 2021. Selected solo exhibitions include Hungry Women, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, upcoming, 2024, Picnics and Parties, Gallery Belenius, Stockholm, upcoming, 2024, Eternal Summer, Castello San Basilio residency, Pisticci, 2023, A Many-Splendoured Thing, Rusha & Co., Los Angeles, 2023, Artificial Paradises, Soho Revue, London, 2022, and Cats and Girls, Soy Capitán, Berlin, 2022. Awards include The Drawing Room Biennial Bursary, 2021.