How Many Worlds: Martin Wong in California

How Many Worlds surveys the early work of artist Martin Wong and his journey through the varied social worlds of California in the 1960s and 1970s: lumber workers, migrants, fisherman, hippies, and drag queens, among others. While Wong has emerged in recent years as a critical figure in New York during the 1980s, his time in California and his wide-ranging output in clay, calligraphy, drawing, painting, and printmaking remain lesser known. The exhibition draws from the collections of Wong’s oldest friends, in particular, bringing together artworks rarely presented to the public. From piece to piece, we see Wong move between the seaside town of Eureka, where he savored an air of small-town America, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he participated in the emerging counterculture and collaborated with the pioneering “acid drag” theater ensemble, the Angels of Light. The exhibition falls on the 60th anniversary of the Berkeley Art Center’s founding and Wong’s short-lived studies at UC Berkeley, returning him to the place where he first emerged as an artist.