Silent Echoes of Becoming: Chris Huen Sin-Kan

Opening reception with the artist: Tuesday, 11 November, 4 – 6 pm (Artist-led Tour: 5 pm – 5:45 pm)

Huen is driven by the observation of daily occurrence to create paintings based on the motifs of his family and everyday environment. He does not make sketches or take photographs onsite, instead, relies on his memories to develop his images as he faces the canvas in his studio, demonstrating complex compositions through varied angles and perspectives. Recurring throughout his works are his wife Haze, son Joel, daughter Tess, and the family dogs Balltsz and MuiMui—the closest and most essential presences in his daily life. By continuously depicting these same motifs, even as countries and settings change, Huen’s paintings quietly register both intimacy and the slow passage of time. Influenced by Chinese ink painting, his canvases are articulated with restrained brushstrokes, often leaving space and ambiguity while still accommodating a multiplicity of elements. In this new series, Huen departs from his previous approach of starting with a plain white or black canvas, from which he would construct form out of nothingness. Instead, he begins with washes of colour, such as orange or beige-green, that spread across the surface. These irregular, indeterminate patterns generate unpredictable forms, transforming his practice from one of creating order to one of looking for it. This is quietly embodied in MuiMui and Joel (2025), where an ivory-black wash drifts across a white ground, accented with hints of yellow, and fragments of blue settle like glimpses of the sky through trees. Within these shifting layers, branches and figures emerge and recede, so that the very fluctuations of the washes guide the order of the composition. At the centre, Joel and MuiMui appear as if suspended in a shifting space, evoking both the layering of memory and the passage of time.

Huen states that this body of work “emerges from a fascination with uncertainty.” He explains: “…the space where things are still forming, where clarity has not yet arrived. In life, I often notice how the past feels like a story with a clear thread, yet the present is something else entirely. It is ambiguous, unresolved, sometimes even misty. I wanted to hold onto that tension. The difference between the way we experience a moment and the way we later narrate it.” Through his painting, Huen seeks not to secure the days as a solid narrative, but to capture the delicate instant in which the present transforms into the past. In his works, ambiguity and uncertainty form the very foundation of the canvas, while fields of colour act as guideposts through this state of flux.

This new series, which visualises the subtle residues of everyday life that can only be recognised after they have passed, represents Huen’s further exploration into the fluidity of recognition. Rather than depict specific moments or events, his act of leaving behind silent echoes of becoming on the canvas can be read as an emotional act of attempting to hold on to passing time itself.