Amidst the unrelenting bustle of megalopolis Hong Kong, Chris Huen Sin Kan has built himself a quiet life, one which celebrates the quotidian and the fleeting. From his 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 paints the people, activities and landscapes that shape his daily life.
Huen’s large-scale oil paintings, a constellation of brushmarks often starring a cast of recurring characters including his wife Haze, son Joel, and dogs Balltz, MuiMui 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 eternalize 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.
