Mystic Meander, Martin Browne Contemporary Sydney 2024

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.

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
138 x 199 cm
Oil on Italian linen

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Out Back
138 x 199 cm
Oil on Italian linen

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Follow Forever
179 x 286 cm (diptych, each panel 179 x 138 cm)
Oil on Italian linen

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Hideaway
179 x 138 cm
Oil on Italian linen

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Channeling
179 x 138 cm
Oil on Italian linen

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Desert Sea
122 x 112 cm
Oil on Italian linen

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