CHELSEA RYOKO WONG IS NOT AFRAID OF FEELING

notes from her recent show: nostalgia for the present tense @ jessica silverman

Chelsea Ryoko Wong’s Mint Tea in the Sauna during Sunset @ the de Young

My last de Young museum visit was a portal, drawing me closer to parts of the SF arts scene that I hadn’t seen before and new possibilities scattered out around me in a wild array. I learned that one of the artists from the Svane Gift’s exhibit: About Place had an exhibit that was closing the next day. Then I found out about the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, a space that looks both cozy and amazing and requires an appointment to visit. There was an opening at the Marin Headlands Space coming up, which was, like the de Young, recently gifted funds from the Svane family – but I couldn’t get there because it conflicted with my manifestation magazine collage party planned the next day. Even though I was yet to host the party, it seemed that my wish—to be a more integrated part of the SF Arts community—had already been served.

I chose Chelsea Ryoko Wong’s exhibit: Nostalgia for the Present Tense as my next artist’s date because her painting from the de Young gave me the feeling of Los Angeles, which I was beginning to feel nostalgic for (just as I was simultaneously feeling embraced by the possibilities in SF). I left Los Angeles feeling weird and artsy and I never missed watching the pink and purple sunset that landed at the edge of the succulent silhouettes each night. Now I find myself in the kitchen, facing east even when the sunset is miraculous and visible from the west side of the apartment. San Francisco, landscapes aside, has set me into a state of practicality as I, like so many people here, wonder how on earth we’re going to be able to afford to stay here for good.

The Jessica Silverman gallery was further north than I expected and I miraculously found parking just below the arches in Chinatown. I walked under the red lanterns toward a set of mat black doors with gold handles that signaled the entrance. A part of me was embarrassed about what I was wearing: a green dress over a pair of almost the same color green leggings that could only be called an outfit because it was monochromatic. I hadn’t quite made it through that door that is “September” yet and so I’d consciously thrown on the same clothes I’d been wearing all summer knowing that if I thought too much about it I would miss the last day of the show. Plus, I’d done this so many times before in New York—smoothed myself into a scene by being almost invisible—that I found my footing quickly enough and went inside.

The colorful canvases greeted me and I made my way around to each, looking for one I wanted to take in for ten minutes.

Each painting was a portrait of a different kind of landscape, filled with figures enjoying the space, with one big exception. In a story told on the left wall in the middle, people were eating oysters in a room with windows that faced a shed on a dock that had burst into flames. I immediately saw the burning and then looked away, finding my favorite moment in a scene of some very fashionable people playing a card game at a bar somewhere cultural but not culturally specific. In hindsight, the bar was a good reprieve from a reminder of the climate apocalypse. As I was taking notes on the objects in the painting…

Seven people sit at a table and each of them have five cards facing down. The bottles on the bar shelves behind them have a beautiful mixture of fruit and other graphic iconography on their labels. Globe lights hang from the ceiling. The goblets they are drinking out of have either moons or stars or roman numerals on them and their insides are lacquered with different colors. One woman wears a tube top with two fishes pointing in opposite directions which you can imagine are made out of sparkles.

Chelsea Ryoko WongNobody Gets Out of Here Alive, 2024 with permission from the Jessica Silverman Gallery

…I hear the voice of someone behind me announce that she’s come to visit her paintings for one last time until they go away for good. It is her. THE ART MONSTER responsible for these genius works.

Are you the artist? I asked, turning around to face the three people standing together.

I can’t tell you how loud my voice sounded in the room. She moved closer to me and said that she was and I gave my gushing review and asked a dumb question about the faces of the characters in all of the paintings.

They are all smiling, I said. Is that intentional? 

That’s not quite the question I wanted to ask. I think somewhere I knew it was unsettling: this everyone smiling situation, because do we not all actually live in a state of fear–right now especially (and isn’t it always right now?). A part of me wanted to know if anyone could ever be as happy as these cheery individuals, skiing, frolicking in the snow, holding hands in the gardens, standing majestically with towels wrapped around their heads alongside a perfect pool of blue. Is anyone really allowed this kind of comfort without exception? Or is the artist, well, making fun of our wish for utopia? This is how cynical I am in comparison.

Chelsea gave the answer that I know she’s given a million times and then said, but you know, there is one exception. And she mentioned the painting with the burning studio behind the people eating oysters, telling me that this was an actual scene from her real life. She had been selected to do an artist’s residency at a space just north of San Francisco and the night that kicked off her stay had turned into a nightmare. As the party inside was underway something sparked in the room by the dock and it had burst into flames behind the celebrating guests. Nobody was hurt in the end but she had to cancel her residency and it made enough of an impact on her that she had included the moment inside her work about all the fantasy lives she had either already conjured or already lived.