Most people who seek the transcendent feeling that comes from encountering incredible art never will – and not necessarily because they don’t know where to look for it, but because institutions and galleries are absolutely flooded with so-called “art.”

Most people will never even try to buy a piece of contemporary art – and not necessarily because they can’t afford it, but because they can’t navigate the chaos, or don’t know how to distinguish what’s “good” art from so-called “bling” or “hype.”

Most people who acquire fine art today will never see a return on their investment – and not necessarily because fine art has no investment potential, but because they don’t know how to see through the opaque and unregulated market that trades in it.

Matthew Blong, Founder and President, Charting Transcendence, Inc.
December, 2023

I’m Matthew Blong, the founder of Charting Transcendence, and I am seeking to disrupt the art advisory business.

I’m an unusual, experienced connoisseur who came to art after 25 years of exploring the world in my own unique way.

I’ve been keen on art for years. I trained as an artist. I’ve also worn hats as a diplomat, businessman, and manager.

For years I’ve also been creating transcendent experiences for people around art. Doing this brings me joy and unleashes my superpower, which is also the name of my company.

Charting Transcendence stands apart from other firms, run by “experts,” insiders, and salespeople who have built careers built on typical credentials and success.

I can identify people and institutions who, thanks to market dynamics of demand and scarcity of supply, are actively involved in determining what kind of art people will pay a lot of money for.

Many rely on opacity to protect their profit margins, enhance their own prestige, or inflate their own egos.

Occasionally, they’re even willing to cheat and lie to defend the territory they’ve staked out.

I’ve known this for years, appalled and dismayed. These are not the games that I care to play.

More commonly, though, they are simply creating hype, often embellishing or fabricating stories around artists, whether reputable or not.

Some of this art is good, and some of it will appreciate in price. I understand this and can certainly pick art that is more likely to do this.

Like them, I’ve been following the art world for years, completed masters-level studies in contemporary arts with honors, and have traveled far and wide to see the most breathtaking art in the world.

A monumental sculpture *Clean Slate* (2018) by much-hyped contemporary artist KAWS, in the collection of The Fort Worth Modern. Although I do enjoy and find KAWS’s work compelling, whether or not you are drawn to acquire it and whether or not you are deeply moved by it are completely separate things.

Yet for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt apart from my peers.

Different. In how I see the world, and how I navigate it.

You see, my brain works differently from other people.

I’ve known this, on some level, for many years. But I’ve only come to deeply understand it – and embrace it – much more recently.

The way I connect art to time, place, and sensation.

The things that draw my attention and the journeys that they have inspired me to embark upon.

The way I dance with an intoxicating joy and beauty in things, both exquisite and banal.

These are gifts that I’ve learned to work with and apply as differentiators in the art business.

I’m proud to call myself an “insider” to the art world who retains the perspective of an outsider, which permits me to clearly see the systems – and the multi-billion dollar market that fuels them – that others have constructed.

Yet at the end of the day, I’m more interested in what kind of art is going to move you every time you look at it.

For as much art as I see, my views and tastes are always evolving. Yet my conviction remains in knowing in the moment the difference between art that gives someone a transcendent experience and art that is “hot” because other people have created hype.

I can track both, but where other art advisors are going to direct you towards the hype, I will guide you consistently to art that matters to you.

I navigate both tracks so that you don’t miss out on the potential for your art to appreciate, yet I will never lose sight of the goal of finding art that will create a transcendent experience for you.

Through Charting Transcendence I curate art experiences for people who want to learn more and surround themselves with art they love. And I’m a lot better than others at finding and directing people towards it.

This is the way my brain works: I actually care about what is “good” art – “good” being defined as art that is going to give you a sense of transcendence when you live with it.

It’s just one of a number of things that differentiate Charting Transcendence from every other art advisory firm in operation today.

Frieze Week Los Angeles Wrap Up and Summary of (Some of) the Best Art I Saw

Last week I was in Los Angeles for Frieze Art Week. The London-based high-end competitor to Art Basel has been gradually expanding, and five years after the first iteration of its LA edition, it’s now clear that the fair is here to stay for the long term, making February’s “Frieze Week” one of the very best times of the year to visit art in the City of Angels.

I’ve had a relationship with LA’s art scene since 2016. I briefly considered attending graduate school in the city, and each time I return, I find the contemporary art scene more flourishing than the last.

On this occasion, I visited three art fairs, eight museums, and I lost count of the number of galleries I visited after about 20.

It was a very intense program, not easy to summarize, but I will attempt to do so below visually and with some sort descriptions of some of the best art that I saw.

Favorite Museum Shows

Arguably the most captivating museum show on in Los Angeles at the moment, Paul Pfeiffer’s 25-year retrospective Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is being shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Center.

“Vitruvian Figure” (2008), a model of a stadium that can accommodate one million spectators, by Paul Pfeiffer. Thus he visually links mass viewership of the modern era to classical times.

A cute pink whale, who looks like he’s straight out of a Vineyard Vines polo shirt, sitting on a bench in a work of art by Cosima Von Bonin. with a backdrop of colorful windows by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, at the Marciano Art Foundation. Founded by the creators of Guess Jeans, the family’s private collection of contemporary art is outstanding and is housed in a former Masonic Temple on Wilshire Blvd.

Another impressive and notable Los Angeles museum show, presented at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, is the outstanding retrospective stanley brown, presenting the life’s work of Dutch conceptual artist Stanley Brown.

If it’s even possible to imagine an exhibition of art being more conceptual than this one, it would probably be empty gallery with a single wall label reading, “this is the art, and the artist’s intention was for you to be fully present in this space while not doing anything and not talking about it.”

Brouwn notoriously did not permit photography of his work, shunned interviews, and resisted documentation of his practice to the point of almost complete dematerialization of his work… which was the point of his singular practice.

The best way I can describe this this exhibition is that it consists of a white-walled gallery with a dozen or so simple wooden display cases, containing typewritten documents and a few dozen pieces of metal inside. The statements asked you to imagine various scenarios, or documented information that the artist had collected. Brouwn was very interested in measurements — why an inch or a foot is an arbitrary concept to begin with, for example.

As an artist he sought to eliminate everything — including material — from between himself and the viewer except for the idea of the art itself. This is the hallmark of a truly conceptual artist.

In fact I can only think of a handful of other conceptualists who got anywhere close to Brouwn in terms of such dematerialization — Tino Seghal is one and my mother’s former college art professor Douglas Huebler might be another.