In Slow Burn, Shawn Huckins puts the cognitive dissonance that defines our current era in stark relief. The New Hampshire-based painter has long challenged American mythology and collective aggrandizing by reinterpreting canonical artworks and visual languages. His series have commented on the U.S.’s proclivity for erasing history and the ways our garments convey social status and class. In this new body of work, he directs us to the contradictory experience of witnessing destruction as both a spectacle and a distant occurrence.
Slow Burn presents a suite of landscapes, each veiled by curtains. Floral drapery flanks a catastrophic explosion, a sliver of sunlight peeks through a decorative toile de jouy pattern, and delicate lace veils a wildfire in the distance. Opened just enough to allow a partial glimpse, the curtains suggest a theatrical scene in which the raging disasters of war and the climate crisis are ongoing.
In contrast to the 19th-century landscapes synonymous with the Hudson River School, Huckins stages scenes in which romanticism and idealized vistas are long gone. While the viewer peers outward from the safety of a home, the fires and bombs that characterize the outside world inch closer, and the complacency, privilege, and pure luck that have provided protection thus far are ever more precarious.
Slow Burn runs from July 11 to August 22 at K Contemporary in Denver. Until then, find more from the artist on Instagram.
