Artist shows he's a raw talent
Steve Meacham June 28, 2009
As a highly acclaimed painter, Jun Chen is on a roll. His portraits have been hung in the Archibald Prize exhibition three times since 2006 and he was a finalist in the Wynne Prize this year.
As a highly acclaimed painter, Jun Chen is on a roll. His portraits have been hung in the Archibald Prize exhibition three times since 2006 and he was a finalist in the Wynne Prize this year.
His paintings hang as far afield as Helsinki, Shenzhen, and Parliament House, Canberra.
But as his latest exhibition opened this weekend at Sydney's Ray Hughes Gallery, the Chinese-Australian was back in Brisbane for his "day job", serving sushi.
"My first job when I came to Australia in 1990 was working in a Japanese restaurant," Chen said. So, even though he did not know the difference between sashimi and a nori roll then, he is now the co-owner of a Sushi Station restaurant.
"I usually work three or four days a week at the restaurant," said the classically trained brush-and-ink painter, who graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1986. "But my partner is on holiday this weekend, so I had to rush back."
Many of the canvases in his new show, Spring, were painted back in his studio after the restaurant had closed.
In Australia Chen has reinvented himself as an expressionist who applies thick layers of paint with a palette knife.
He is best known for his portraits and confronting nudes that have been likened to those of the British artist Lucien Freud.
But the new exhibition is his first devoted to large-scale Australian landscapes, a passion ignited by a visit to the vineyards of the Hunter Valley.
In honour of that trip, Chen and his wife, Grace, have named their three-month-old son Hunter.
For details of the exhibition see www.rayhughesgallery.com.
