Chris Huen Sin Kan

Simon Lee Gallery, London

Acquired by the present owner from the above

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倫敦，Simon Lee畫廊

現藏者購自上述來源

Hong Kong-born artist Chris Huen is inspired by everyday life, depicting his day-to-day experiences using his innovative visual language of layered dabs of paint and his activation of white space, creating scenes that draw harmoniously upon abstraction and elements of traditional Chinese ink painting. Most of his works relate to his experience growing up and raising his family in Hong Kong.

Featured in his solo show- Tall Trees - And The Things I Might Have Forgotten- at Gallery Exit in 2019, Joel springs from a series of horizontal paintings whereby towering greeneries dominate the composition. Embedded within the kaleidoscopic shrubberies are motifs extracted from the artist’s daily surroundings, including pieces of furniture, his beloved dogs, and in the present work’s case, his newborn son Joel. Joel sits in a crumbled garden, capturing the aftermath of typhoon Mangkhut that blasted Hong Kong in 2018 and affected the artist’s home in Yuen Long. Huen once mentioned in an interview that he paints because of love, and for that same reason, he paints his family members.

Compared to Huen’s muted early works, Joel presents a kaleidoscopic scene where there is an evident increase in palette diversity. Combined with the artist’s loose feathery brushstrokes, the majestic work is reminiscent of shattered church glass windows exuding dazzling luminosity and transparency. Spatial logic is rendered irrelevant in this work. Instead, the viewers are invited to caress the fragmented details with their gaze, occasionally picking out the banalities often unnoticed in our daily routines.

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禤善勤出生於香港，他受日常生活啓發，運用層曡式塗抹的創新視覺語言，善於打破空白畫面的沉悶，描繪出自己的平日生活經歷，創造抽象藝術和傳統中國水墨畫元素互相和諧融合的場景。他的大部分創作都關於他在香港的個人成長經歷以及養家經歷。

《喬爾》曾於2019年安全口畫廊為藝術家舉辦的個展「禤善勤: 《高樹，和那些被我遺忘的事物》」中展出。此畫作源自禤善勤一系列橫向繪畫，每幅都被高聳密集的植物佔據了整個構圖，而在樹裡葉間穿梭的則是藝術家筆下常見的日常周遭人與物，當中包括一些家具、他的愛犬以及在本作中面向觀眾的幼子Joel。禤善勤的兒子坐在一個被翻山倒海後院裡，略顯凌亂的環境捕捉了2018年颱風山竹吹襲香港時對藝術家在元朗的家的影響。禤善勤曾在訪問中提及，他繪畫是因為愛，而也正因為此原因，他繪畫他的家人。

本作與禤善勤的早期作品相較，色彩顯著的變得豐富，而結合藝術家鬆散隨行的筆觸，尺幅宏偉的畫作讓人聯想起教堂裡的彩繪玻璃，散發出萬花筒般的琉璃光彩和透明度。在本作中，空間邏輯淪為次要，取而代之的是美輪美奐的各種零碎細節，引誘觀眾目光沉浸其中，目光遊歷間偶爾辨識出日常生活中經常被忽視的平庸之美。