Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, there is a phenomenon in contemporary art that deserves to be taken seriously, far beyond fashion effects and market speculation. Chris Huen Sin Kan, a Hong Kong painter based in London since 2021, develops a pictorial approach that questions with remarkable acuity our relationship to perception and memory. Born in 1991, this man of gentle manners and deep reflection has built an artistic universe of rare coherence, where the most banal moments of family existence become vectors of a meditation on the very essence of gaze.
His work, far from indulging in the anecdotal, reveals a plastic intelligence that draws its roots from a double tradition: that of Western oil painting and that of Chinese ink. This synthesis is not a mere stylistic exercise, but proceeds from an inner necessity that finds its expression in large-format canvases where, in an eternal present, his wife Haze, his children Joel and Tess, and their three dogs with savory names: Balltsz, MuiMui and Doodood, evolve. These recurring characters are not the subjects of a beatific familial narcissism, but the actors of a systematic exploration of what he himself calls “the experience of seeing”.
This quest finds a particularly deep echo in the work of Jerzy Kosinski, a Polish-American novelist whose lapidary formula resonates like an aesthetic manifesto: “The principles of true art are not to depict, but to evoke” [1]. This phrase, which Huen Sin Kan himself quotes in his interviews, sheds new light on his pictorial approach. The artist does not seek to faithfully reproduce the scenes of his domestic life, but to make emerge, by the magic of his brush, this particular quality of attention that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Like Kosinski in his novels, Huen Sin Kan works on the interstices, on these suspended moments where reality becomes porous and allows the emergence of a deeper truth.
Kosinski’s literature, marked by the experience of war and exile, explores the mechanisms of perception and memory with surgical acuity. In “Being There” or “The Painted Bird”, he reveals how our understanding of the world passes through a series of subjective filters that constantly deform and reconstruct reality. This approach finds a striking parallel in Huen Sin Kan’s method, who paints exclusively from memory, refusing any recourse to photography or preparatory sketch. This practice, far from being anecdotal, constitutes the very heart of his artistic research.
When Huen Sin Kan discusses his technique, he speaks of “layers of memorized imagery” that are deposited on the canvas like so many temporal sediments. This geological metaphor reveals a conception of time that escapes linear chronology to settle in what philosophers call pure duration. His paintings do not tell stories, they create atmospheres, emotional climates where the spectator can draw according to his own inner resonances. This approach is akin to what Kosinski calls “the art of the pause”, this ability to suspend the temporal flux to allow the emergence of meaning.
Huen Sin Kan’s pictorial technique fully participates in this aesthetics of evocation. His oil painting, diluted with turpentine to the fluidity of watercolor, creates effects of transparency and superposition that give his canvases this characteristic vaporous quality. Impastos are rare, contours dissolve, and it is in this economy of means that magic is born. His characters emerge from colored backgrounds like apparitions, their silhouettes barely detaching themselves from the vegetal chaos that surrounds them. This technique, inherited from the tradition of Chinese ink, favors suggestion over description, essence over appearance.
Kosinski, in his reflections on art, insists on the importance of what he calls “the creative relationship between the observer and the observed”. This dialectic finds in Huen Sin Kan’s work a plastic translation of striking justice. His paintings are never frozen snapshots, but condensates of experience where several temporalities are mixed. A single canvas can thus superimpose the memory of a morning walk with that of an afternoon nap, creating a complex temporal geometry that escapes the laws of classical perspective.
This approach to temporality finds a particularly enlightening theoretical extension in Donald Winnicott’s work on the transitional space [2]. The British psychoanalyst, a contemporary of Kosinski, developed a theory of creativity that resonates disturbingly with Huen Sin Kan’s artistic practice. For Winnicott, the transitional space constitutes this intermediate zone between inner reality and outer reality, this paradoxical space where the individual can create without constraint while remaining in relation to the world. This notion sheds new light on the approach of the Hong Kong artist.
In his paintings, Huen Sin Kan effectively creates a transitional space where his family memories become transitional objects in the Winnicottian sense. These dogs running in improbable gardens, these children playing in settings where interior and exterior blend, these women resting in hybrid landscapes, all these elements function as so many pictorial “blankets” that allow the artist and the spectator to negotiate their relationship to reality. The transitional object, according to Winnicott, is neither purely subjective nor totally objective: it exists in this in-between that the child invests with his creativity to tame the world.
This transitional dimension explains in part the soothing character of Huen Sin Kan’s work. His canvases function as spaces of psychic rest where the tensions between inside and outside, between me and non-me, between past and present, find a form of temporary resolution. The artist himself evokes this consoling function of his work when he explains wanting to “communicate the ordinary of life” to offer his contemporaries a counterpoint to the agitation of the modern world.
Winnicott insists on the fact that the transitional space is only constituted in relation to a fundamental feeling of trust, this capacity to feel secure in creative exploration. This dimension is strikingly present in the familial universe that Huen Sin Kan deploys in his paintings. His characters evolve in a protected world, sheltered from historical and social turbulence, in this domestic bubble that the artist claims as his field of investigation. This voluntary limitation of the field of observation, far from being an escape, constitutes a deliberate artistic strategy that allows the deepening of research.
Winnicott’s influence is also felt in the very conception that Huen Sin Kan has of creativity. For the psychoanalyst, primary creativity precedes any form of adaptation to reality: it is what allows the child to “create” the maternal breast at the very moment he finds it. This fundamental creativity, which has nothing to do with the production of works of art, constitutes the very basis of the feeling of existing authentically. Huen Sin Kan seems to have internalized this lesson when he affirms that “the essence of existence should not be constructed nor limited by the conventions that result from a collective cognition”.
This philosophy of creation finds its plastic translation in the artist’s technique itself. His refusal of any preparatory sketch, his intuitive method that proceeds by successive additions until “the image appears closer to the experience” he has lived, all this testifies to a confidence in the primary processes of creativity that directly evokes Winnicottian theories. The artist places himself in a position of active receptivity, letting forms emerge without constraining them, in a subtle dance between control and letting go.
The Winnicottian notion of play area also finds a particular echo in Huen Sin Kan’s work. For Winnicott, authentic play (playing) differs from codified games (games) by its ability to create a space of creative freedom where the child can explore his relations to the world without external constraint. Huen Sin Kan’s paintings function as such play areas for adults, spaces where the artist can freely experiment with the relationships between color, form and emotion, in a playful exploration that has no other purpose than itself.
This playful dimension is particularly manifested in the way the artist treats his animal subjects. His three dogs, true stars of his compositions, evolve in his canvases with a spontaneity and joy of living that contaminate the entire composition. MuiMui contemplating the viewer from the depth of a dark forest, Balltsz and Doodood playing in a lush garden, all these canine moments capture this particular quality of pure present that Winnicott associates with the experience of authentic play.
The recent evolution of Huen Sin Kan’s work, since his installation in London, perfectly illustrates the transitional dynamic described by Winnicott. The transition from a familiar environment (Hong Kong) to a new setting (London) has caused a notable transformation of his palette and his compositions, without however breaking the continuity of his research. This creative adaptability, which maintains artistic identity while integrating new elements, testifies to a remarkable psychic health in the Winnicottian sense.
The new London canvases, with their darker backgrounds and more vibrant greens, reveal how the artist has been able to transform geographical uprooting into creative enrichment. This alchemy, which transmutes the experience of exile into artistic material, directly evokes the processes of symbolization described by Winnicott. The lost object (Hong Kong) does not disappear but is transformed into a transitional object (painting) that allows the link to be maintained while accepting separation.
This creative transformative capacity is also manifested in the technical evolution of the artist. His progressive passage from white backgrounds to black backgrounds testifies to a maturation of his reflection on perception and memory. As he explains himself, white evokes “the active search for something”, while black suggests “an inward-looking perspective”, “a feeling of tranquility, as if sitting in an armchair processing information and stimulation”. This evolution reveals a growing sophistication of his plastic thought, a capacity to modulate the psychological effects of his compositions with remarkable precision.
Huen Sin Kan’s work thus inscribes itself in this artistic tradition that makes art a laboratory of human experience rather than a mere aesthetic diversion. Like Kosinski in his novels, like Winnicott in his clinical observations, the Hong Kong artist invites us to reconsider our perceptual obviousness, to question the mechanisms by which we construct our relationship to the real. His paintings do not show us the world as it is, but as we live it, in this irreducible subjectivity that constitutes our very humanity.
This phenomenological approach to painting finds its theoretical justification in the Winnicottian conception of potential space. For the psychoanalyst, this intermediate space between self and other, between interior and exterior, constitutes the very place of cultural experience. It is in this paradoxical zone that art, religion, poetry, all these activities that give meaning to human existence, are born. Huen Sin Kan’s paintings fully inhabit this potential space, offering the viewer a place to meet his own subjectivity.
The critical reception of Huen Sin Kan’s work testifies, moreover, to this evocative capacity that characterizes great works of art. His exhibitions regularly provoke intense emotional reactions in visitors, as if his paintings reactivated in each one buried memories, forgotten emotions. This affective resonance, which far exceeds the framework of aesthetic appreciation, confirms the relevance of his artistic approach.
The artist is also aware of this therapeutic dimension of his work. In his interviews, he regularly evokes the importance of these “delicious and insignificant moments of daily life” that he strives to preserve through painting. This mission of memorial conservation, which could seem nostalgic, takes on a prospective dimension in him. By fixing these fleeting moments, he offers his contemporaries alternative models of perception, invitations to slow down the pace of existence to find contact with this particular quality of presence that our era tends to forget.
This prophylactic function of art, this capacity to preserve and transmit modes of being threatened by modernity, inscribes Huen Sin Kan’s work in a prestigious artistic lineage that goes from Chardin to Morandi, via Vuillard and Bonnard. Like these masters of intimism, he transforms the humble into the sublime, reveals the extraordinary that lies at the heart of the ordinary. But unlike his predecessors, he operates this transmutation in a cultural context marked by technological acceleration and globalization, which confers a particular urgency to his approach.
His installation in London, far from constituting a rupture, has revealed the universal scope of his research. The new British landscapes, with their particular light and vibrant greens, have enriched his palette without altering the essence of his discourse. This capacity for adaptation, which maintains coherence while integrating novelty, testifies to a remarkable artistic maturity. It also reveals the transcultural validity of his approach, his ability to touch beyond geographical and cultural specificities.
The future of Huen Sin Kan’s work promises to be rich in developments. His recent experiments with large formats and dark backgrounds open new perspectives to his research. One can imagine that he will continue to dig this furrow of the sublime ordinary, deepening more and more his understanding of the perceptual and memorial mechanisms. His fidelity to a restricted number of subjects, far from constituting a limitation, allows him to explore with rare depth the infinite variations that the human experience can take.
Chris Huen Sin Kan’s work constitutes an artistic proposal of rare coherence, which draws its strength from the convergence between a fair poetic intuition and a deep theoretical reflection. By relying on the teachings of Kosinski and Winnicott, he has been able to develop an original plastic language that speaks to our contemporaries with particular acuity. In a world saturated with images and information, his paintings offer oases of contemplation, psychic breathing spaces where everyone can draw according to their needs. This reparative function of art, this capacity to restore our relationship to time and space, perhaps constitutes the most precious contribution of this discreet but essential artist.
- Jerzy Kosinski, Conversations with Jerzy Kosinski, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1993
- Donald W. Winnicott, Transitional Objects and Phenomena, in From Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis, Paris, Petite bibliothèque Payot, 1983
