
Kevin Chin’s paintings intersect inverted landscapes to advocate borderless new territories. His third solo exhibition with Martin Browne Contemporary, ‘Mystic Meander,’ questions if we can transcend worldly borders altogether.
Martin Browne Contemporary 2024
Crossing continents, the new work evokes the sense of a parallel dimension. That magical feeling out in nature that a whole other world could be hiding between the crevices. The paintings act as portals, like in ‘Gateway’ passing between twin trees, or ‘Sky Road’ driving straight into the sky.
Carefully planted cultural references become slippery, taking us somewhere that is perpetually in between. Spring-time cherry blossoms in ‘Follow Forever’ shift through Winter snowscapes and Summer waterfalls.
The artist is influenced by contemporary magic realist literature, a genre which poetically creates worlds that resemble our own but are slightly awry, and uses this as a lens to step outside ourselves and re-examine the way things are. In ‘So Inclined,’ clothes hang across mountainscapes. In others, reflections turn the earth upside down.
Kevin explains, “I want to open a meditative space to channel the metaphysical.” One of the paintings is even titled, ‘Channeling.’ Here, land formations that channel water and steam also channel hidden forces. Kevin experiments widely with colour to express the wonder that connects us to deeper states of being.
This attention to colour gives the paintings their signature warmth. “The paintings are symptomatic of an unstable world, and my intention is to offer some comfort and respite.” Thus Kevin brings the homely with us when venturing into the wild. In ‘Out Back,’ rows of pumpkins recede into red dirt roads. A sense of security informs ‘Hideaway’ and ‘Double Lake,’ where remote shacks are protected by towering trees shimmering with colour.
These transcendent paintings offer differing perspectives giving us license to move more fluidly through the world. Here we find a safe space to meander, to unlock something mystic.
So Inclined, 2024, oil on linen, 138 x 198 cm
Channeling 2024, oil on linen, 179 x 138 cm
Desert Sea 2024, oil on linen, 122 x 112 cm
Double Lake Double Take 2024, oil on linen, 138 x 198 cm
Follow Forever 2024, oil on linen, 179 x 286 cm (diptych, each panel 179 x 138 cm)
Gateway 2024, oil on linen, 94 x 112 cm
Hideaway 2024, oil on linen, 179 x 148 cm
Out Back 2024, oil on linen, 138 x 198 cm
Sky Road 2024, oil on linen, 112 x 94 cm
