All posts tagged: Chris Huen Sin Kan

Michael Ho, Chris Huen Sin Kan, Timothy Lai, Su Yu-Xin

Inside the White Cube: New Moroism / White Cube / Hong Kong / May 31 – Sep 9, 2023 / By Christina Ko / Blurred lines are very much the theme at White Cube’s summer exhibition, Inside the White Cube: New Moroism. In the literal sense, it refers to the Moroism movement, which emerged in Japan in the 19th century and saw stark outlines replaced by vague or hazy delineations of spatial boundaries. In a more abstract sense, these blurred lines are cultural ones: the four artists contributing to the show are of Asian descent, but no longer live or have never lived in their respective ethnic homelands, and pay homage to their heritage through their work. As such, the painting-dominant show is both romantic and restrained, filled with imagination and longing through an exploration of the concept of home, as embodied in each artist’s practice. The gallery’s lower floor features three works by London-based Michael Ho, who was raised in a small town in the Netherlands, a so-called third-culture kid whose childhood was and …

New Moroism at White Cube Hong Kong

Published by Artomity Magazine

Inside the White Cube: New Moroism /May 31 – 9 Sep, 2023 / White Cube Hong Kong /50 Connaught Road, Central /Hong Kong /+852 2592 2000 /Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 7pm / whitecube.com White Cube Hong Kong is pleased to present New Moroism, a group exhibition which brings together four artists who seek to expand the parameters and ideation of figuration in painting. Part of an emerging generation of artists whose roots are in Asia, Michael Ho, Chris Huen Sin Kan, Timothy Lai and Su Yu-Xin reflect a new approach and sensibility, responsive to trans-regional shifts and migration. Embracing the concept of ambiguity within their paintings, the artists each explore Moroism, an aesthetic paradigm which is derived from the ‘mōrōtai’ style (mōrō literally translated as ‘vague’ or ‘indistinct’) that emerged in Japan of the late Meiji era (1868–1912), also found as a pictorial intention originating in traditional Chinese painting theory. Determined by the artists’ shared East Asian heritage, the works in this exhibition are grounded in personal narrative. Chris Huen Sin Kan’s large-scale oil paintings feature a recurring cast of characters including his wife, son, daughter and dogs. …

Chris Huen Sin Kan 禤善勤

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Puzzled Daydreams / Simon Lee Gallery / London / Jun 15 – Jul 3 / Margot Mottaz / The irony isn’t lost on me that as I emerged from lockdown and into central London for the first time in months, I stepped right into the home of a stranger, albeit through a series of works on paper and large-scale canvasses by artist Chris Huen Sin Kan. Puzzled Daydreams marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with Simon Lee Gallery, and first in London, though it inaugurated the gallery’s online viewing room as the pandemic took its tollon the UK in mid-March and prevented the show from opening to the public until recently, by appointment only. Huen was born and raised in Hong Kong, where he still lives with his wife Haze, their two children, Joel and Tess, and their three dogs, Doodood, MuiMui and Balltsz, who all appear again and again as the loyal protagonists in the artist’s intimate works. As an inherent part of Huen’s daily life, they represent the ideal subject matter to consistently revisit the mundane, trivial moments that make …

Chris Huen Sin Kan

Published by Artomity Magazine

By Elliat Albrecht / As a painter and in person, Chris Huen Sin Kan is far beyond his years. His intuitive paintings look less like those of a 27-year-old and more like those of an artist who’s had several decades to hone his visual language, arriving at a mature and idiosyncratic style of painting. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Huen has been drawing since he was a small child, and earned a BA from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Made with fluid and sometimes staccato brushstrokes, his paintings are characterised by their quotidian content and sketch-like quality; Huen achieves this aesthetic in part by thinning down his oils with turpentine until they appear almost like watercolours. The bare canvas shows through in many places on his paintings; the viewer is left to fill in the blanks of negative space like a word game. These gaps in perception are fundamental to Huen’s philosophy: rather than painting direct representations or his memories, he is concerned with exploring the fragmented experience of looking. With a …

Caroline Chiu & Paul Aiello

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Caroline Chiu, RTHK Radio 4 presenter and art critic with her husband Paul Aiello, discusses three of her favourite pieces from their collection. Chiu saw Chris Huen Sin Kan’s solo exhibition Out of the Ordinary at Gallery Exit in 2015. His ease with painting on a large scale, his sense of allowing white space to exist, without having to fill every inch of the canvas up, exuded confidence. In that show, there was a painting where his girlfriend, now wife, was sitting on Shek O beach. Chiu fell in love with the abstractness of it, but it had already sold. Chiu had bought and renovated an old village house in Shek O and was living there with her family. Falling in love with the location, she began to think about commissioning Hong Kong artists to explore it as an art subject. She visited Shek O Headland with Huen in spring 2016, showing him the most southeasterly point of Hong Kong island, a small outcrop of rock surrounded by the roaring sea. Chiu visited Huen’s studio in July …

Chris Huen Sin Kan

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Of Humdrum Moments /Pilar Corrias /London /19 May – 17 Jun, 2017 /Alex Quicho / Hong Kong artist Chris Huen Sin Kan exhibited eight large paintings at London’s Pilar Corrias gallery, each dedicated to a fleeting everyday moment – moments that Huen believes are forgotten in the narrative of our everyday lives. These are drawings more than paintings: painted in oil, colours nonetheless appear as distinct, as if from a marker pen. As confidence underpins shakiness, something about Huen’s style seems purposely naive. Observing the convergence of so much movement to reveal unspoiled white ground raises questions about the mechanisms of his apparent spontaneity. Once undervalued, the snapshot finds itself prized today. From Wolfgang Tillmans to Juergen Teller, many artists have found the exalted in the in-between, fine-tuning our whittled attention spans to appreciate otherwise neglected details. In Huen’s work, the freeze-frame quality of mercurial surfaces – the water in a kiddie pool, the twist of dense foliage, a restless dog’s sudden gaze – hints at photographic reference material. The snap of a shutter seals an otherwise fleeting …