I’m jealous of the rain. That falls upon your skin. It’s closer than my hands have been.

This painting was produced in 2014, when Wong was a relatively young artist struggling to articulate a personal creative vision and to negotiate his place in the broad, complex world of contemporary art. Viewed collectively, these works offer an glimpse of the artist’s mental universe at that stage in his life; an autobiographical tale told in a series of flatly delineated, vibrantly coloured images that evoke the visual language of graphic design or comic books. Other works in the series serve as deeply personal revelations of Wong’s life as a young artist: his body image issues and sexual preoccupations, intellectual interests and Singaporean identity.

Wong’s paintings may bring to mind various postmodernist art movements, in particular, pop art. Influenced by popular culture and mass consumerism, pop artists set out to blur the distinctions between high art and the broader realm of contemporary visual culture. Wong’s art likewise exploits that uneasy intersection between critical commentary and consumerist-driven appeal. Highlights of the exhibition include works that mimic the style of major stars and movements of contemporary art: the dots of Yayoi Kusama, monochromatic abstraction, graffiti. These works do not act just as an homage to icons in art history, but also are indirect statements on the nature of the art world, where the line between homage and plagiarism--appropriation and copyright infringement--grows ever more porous, and what was once viewed as the signifier of artistic inspiration can quickly be flattened out into visual cliché and caricature.