Recent Exhibitions
Same Time, Same Place
Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco, CA | April 5 - 26, 2025
“Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Same Time, Same Place, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Adrian Kay Wong. Returning for his second solo exhibition with the gallery, Wong invites the viewer into the still moments of his paintings. Reintroducing the human form to the recent works, Wong’s paintings move through veiled narratives, rewarding patience and slowness in their consideration.
Within Wong’s canvases, everyday, overlooked moments become deeply considered, taking on momentous, cinematic qualities. Hints of stories and characters unfold within the exhibition. Shared settings and recurring objects follow the viewer from frame to frame, drawing connections between one another.
Wong expands on the exhibition title - Same Time, Same Place, “It evokes feelings and imagery similar to seeing an old friend; that, even as years pass and worlds change, some things do stay the same – or, that the familiar has value in and of itself. It is often an expression said nonchalantly, offhand and almost cliche. While it usually is said as part of a farewell, it comes with the knowledge that we will return inevitably once again. It comes with a sense of comfort in the way that the sameness of each day can be comforting if we give it the chance. That we bring ‘old’ feelings and perceptions in a ‘new’ time.“
Upon A Golden Mountain
Uprise Art, New York City, NY | Mar 25 - May 24, 2024
“In Upon a Golden Mountain, painter Adrian Kay Wong explores the multifaceted narratives that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary scenes and objects.
With the discovery of gold in San Francisco during the mid-1800s, thousands of Chinese people migrated to the United States for the prospect of finding wealth, and a better life. However, the reality of the “Golden Mountain” proved elusive, marked by hardship and discrimination - while also building resilience and community bonds. Wong masterfully weaves this historical allegory into his paintings, inviting viewers to contemplate the complexities of aspiration, solitude, and the quest for connection.
In what the artist refers to as “appendage paintings”, seemingly incidental circumstances of everyday life are depicted with a keen eye for detail and a profound sense of introspection. There is a central scene which plays out across the primary canvas, and then a connected component that serves to provide extra insight into the scene - an extension of the panorama, or perhaps a key.
Throughout the exhibition, technology acts as a symbol for connection, a tether to the outside world - even in solitude. Objects such as empty chairs, a table of drinking glasses, or multiple cigarettes hint at a more ambiguous reading of the scene, one that could imply the company of many or the isolation of one. Wong’s bisected framing provokes us to consider the subtle narratives that emerge from each object as vestiges of personal significance, cultural identity, and universal symbology.
The exhibition serves as a poignant reflection on the duality of the human condition - contrasting the aesthetic allure of bright colors and meticulously painted tableaus with the somber undercurrents of disconnection, solitude, and yearning.
Upon a Golden Mountain serves as a captivating exploration of the blurred boundaries between artifice and reality, of symbolic abstraction and constructed representation. By depicting the periphery of everyday life - the overlooked and often missed - Wong encourages viewers to confront their own understanding of the world around them, and to embrace the inherent beauty of painting as a medium - a practice steeped in illusion yet grounded in the profound ability to transmit emotive images of lived experience.”
Softly
Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA | March 25 - April 15, 2023
“Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Softly - a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based painter Adrian Kay Wong. Joining the gallery for his debut solo presentation, his work is used as a conduit to focus the viewers’ attention to the small, soft moments in everyday life, paying tribute to the overlooked and ephemeral.
Stories and narratives slowly unfurl like drifting smoke, building characters and internal worlds in each canvas. Formal elements of composition, color and form are brought to the fore by Wong’s precise and thoughtful paintings transmuting the mundane into the sublime. Scenes of quiet introspection are distilled down to their essential forms, asking the viewer to consider and decipher each detail and composition.
Evening light slants in from an open window on a table left with sake glasses, cigarettes and a forgotten phone. The ritual of preparing coffee and juice is left to cast shadows across a counter in the early morning sun. Desks and surfaces are strewn with the objects of a day’s tasks, the only vestiges to hint at actions just out of frame. Wong describes the work as, "Moments that lays just outside of our attention, where upon being noticed the spell of the scene vanishes. The instance just before or after a secret moment that happens when we leave a room and the magic and glow of it that we can never quite perceive in the fleeting scene.”
Each painting is the product of daily existence, elevating peripheral vignettes to center stage. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki, the artist sees “shadows, emptiness and silence as undervalued qualities that make a space beautiful.” The brevity and simplicity allow one to view the elegance, subtlety and beauty in the everyday moments that drift through our lives quietly, softly.”
From A Time And Place
Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA | June 4 - 25, 2022
2022
Glass Rice
San Francisco, CA
“Glass Rice is proud to present From A Time and Place, Adrian Kay Wong’s sophomore solo exhibition with the gallery and co-curated with Sydney Pfaff of Legion Projects. In this continued exploration of everyday narratives, Wong acutely focuses on the significance objects hold in relation to how they shape our sense of memory, nostalgia and what we choose to apply meaning to. In placing these items in the spotlight, he highlights their ability to inform our experiences and allow us to recognize the profundity of quotidian moments that can both feel so personal, yet universal as well.
By taking a slight shift away from the dynamics of form and geometry, Wong has discovered a new-found freedom in focusing on the more nuanced and detailed concepts of object-focused subject matter. The paintings in From A Time and Place reveal sentimental and poignant scenes found in the everyday - the moments that strike us upon reflection. In the artist’s own words “With a plate of cut apples, I’m immediately brought back to my childhood room, working into the night on homework, as my mother quietly brings this snack, only to leave without a word. Banal, momentary, unremarkable – and yet, so deeply representative of affection, tenderness, and a culture’s expression of love. A folded paper plane resting at the edge of a table: memories of simple play, earnest focus on folding paper, forgotten joys of watching it fly.”.
In portraying what appear as insignificant moments in vivid hues, Wong gives luminance to snapshots of scenes that influenced his life and the people who colored it - an entire narrative unraveling from a few simple items. In this body of work, we are reminded of the power objects hold and the immense influence they have over the human experience.”
Close To Home
Uprise Art, New York City, New York | July 8 - August 05, 2021
”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.”
Through The Semblance Of Normalcy
Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA | November 7 - 28, 2020
“Glass Rice is proud to present Through the Semblance of Normalcy, Adrian Kay Wong’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery and co-curated with Sydney Pfaff of Legion Projects. Through the Semblance of Normalcy is a visual journey surrounding familiar isolation, continuation and incidences of beauty in the everyday, conceived and made entirely during shelter in place. Wong creates moments made up of shapes that when isolated, are abstract, and when looked at as a whole, become representational. By bringing these two elements together, Wong builds a unique visual language that allows both the primary subject and contextual elements to exist in a stylistically flat, yet dimensional world as equals.
In this body of work, Wong spotlights personal yet universal scenes of quiet, still and mundane moments spent at home as a means to lead into a greater narrative that is - normalcy. Wong implores his viewers to question what ‘normalcy’ implies and what it means for our future as many parts of our world currently continue to await its ineffectual return.
In posing this question as an undercurrent in his show, Wong uses space to guide his viewers through narration by portraying scenes of where the viewer might stand, areas where figures inhabit a space and scenes of doorways and archways where the viewer might peer or pass through to a place unknown; a place beyond what his subjects have experienced. This gradual movement from A, to B, to C and reverse can be seen in the progression of Hours to Days, Days to Weeks and Weeks to Months. In this triptych, Wong paints the same scene in three iterations. In Hours to Days, a figure is seated inside a home, reading quietly as illuminated arched windows in the background light the stage. As the viewer moves to Days to Weeks, the same figure is seated in the same position, however the book is now lain on a table nearby and the clock shows a different time. As the viewer moves through this narration to the final scene, Weeks to Months, the figure and book have not moved, yet the tone of the final painting feels heavier, melancholic even, as the color palette is now a few shades darker and the passage of time is reflected in the passing of daylight through the room.
Through the Semblance of Normalcy is a portrayal of familiar spaces and interiors we as humans occupy and use, allowing viewers’ personal experiences to navigate them through layers of depth. Wong highlights overlooked and banal moments in an effort to encourage viewers to reconsider what ‘noteworthy’ can be defined as and what ‘normalcy’ can hinder.”