Chris Huen Sin Kan: Painting Again and Again

Huen does not sketch or plan his works before he begins to execute them on canvas, which all depict experiences that he renders as fully as possible in a style he describes as 'en plein air — hereto indoor'. Settings and subjects are familiar and consistent. His dogs, wife, and children appear in views of the artist's studio and home: unassuming, quotidian scenes rendered in quick strokes and watery swathes of earthy shades that balance the roughness of a sketch—and the measured presence of a Chinese ink painting—with the compositional weight of oil on canvas. In Doodood and John (2013), Doodood the dog lies next to a potted plant, ears pricked and eyes forward, as if responding to a noise that was just made. He appears again in Doodood, Mui Mui and Haze (2014), playing with Mui Mui the dog in Huen's potted plant-filled studio, as the artist's wife, Haze, looks on.

Huen's Gallery EXIT show was followed by another solo at the gallery titled Out of The Ordinary (17 July–5 September 2015), which was billed as an extension to the interrogation of the gaze that the artist showcased the year before. In Swimming (2015), Doodood and Mui Mui peer over the surface of a bed covered in a sea-blue sheet—the scene painted in such a way that the viewer becomes the person they are imploring to act; while in 8:30 AM, Getting Ready for Breakfast (2015), the artist, his wife, and Mui Mui lounge on a pointillist green bed that could pass for a field, their figures dwarfed by the details of the room that take over the scene. A billowing curtain appears like negative space save for the light streaks that mark its movement, while a fan to the side of the scene emerges from the leaf-like strokes that mark out a wall... MORE

Image: Chris Huen Sin Kan, Doodood, MuiMui and Balltsz (2020). Oil on canvas. 200 x 320 x 5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Simon Lee Gallery. © Chris Huen Sin Kan. Photo: Ben Westoby.