Amidst the unrelenting bustle of megalopolis Hong Kong, Chris Huen Sin Kan built himself a quiet life, creating works that celebrated the quotidian and the fleeting. From his former home and studio in leafy Yuen Long, removed from the beating pulse of Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui and Hong Kong Island’s financial hub, Huen painted the people, activities and landscapes that shaped his daily life. In 2021, Huen relocated with his family to London, marking a distinctive visual shift in the content of his work as he continues his practice of seeking to capture his surroundings.
Huen’s large-scale oil paintings, a constellation of brush marks often starring a cast of recurring characters including his wife Haze, son Joel, daughter Tess and dogs Balltsz, MiuMiu and Doodood, evolve organically and haphazardly; Huen forgoes underdrawings and sketches, and rather than paint from a photograph or from the scene itself, opts to eternalise the minute and the transient from feeling and memory. Huen’s technique, imbued with both deft abstraction and the hallmarks of traditional Chinese ink painting, involves layering one dab of paint over another until the pattern on the canvas perfectly echoes the spirit of the scene.
[excerpted from Simon Lee website: www.simonleegallery.com]
Solo exhibitions of Huen’s work have been held at Simon Lee Gallery, New York; Pilar Corrias Gallery, London; Nanhai Gallery, Taipei; and Gallery Exit, Hong Kong. Group exhibitions include Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre; Leo Xu Project, Shanghai; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; and Parasite Art Space, Hong Kong.