BEAUTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS INTERSECT IN ‘SLOW BURN’
American artist Shawn Huckins examines humanity’s comfortable detachment from environmental collapse in large-scale paintings composed of two distinct, conflicting layers of reality. Opening on July 11th at K Contemporary in Denver, Slow Burn centers on scenes of raging wildfires, smoke-filled skies, and ‘war clouds’, theatrically framed by hyper-realistic trompe l’œil curtains. The heavy, hyper-realistic drapery appears pulled back just enough to expose the disaster behind it. This visual device establishes a strict physical barrier on the flat surface.
Rather than immersing the viewer in the ash and heat, the drawn curtains keep the audience in the position of a theater-goer, watching the environmental destabilization unfold through a mediated screen. Huckins invites viewers to watch destruction as a staged spectacle, asking them to ‘confront the increasingly mediated ways contemporary crises are experienced through screens, distance, spectacle, and historical memory.’
War Cloud and Floral Blue Curtain, detail, 2026, oil + acrylic on canvas, 37 x 30 inches | all images courtesy of Shawn Huckins
PAINTED WILDFIRES AND WAR CLOUDS BEHIND HYPERREAL CURTAINS
Shawn Huckins has built a long-standing practice of interrogating national mythology and the complexities of modern American culture. Following recent institutional features, including a solo show at Nashville’s Cheekwood Art Museum, the New Hampshire-based painter continues to appropriate the visual syntax of 19th-century romantic landscape painting. While historical figures used this sublime aesthetic to mask the harsh realities of territorial expansion, the works in Slow Burn subvert the tradition entirely. The pristine mountain ranges and valleys deteriorate under the weight of ‘war clouds’ and thick haze, an execution directly informed by the Canadian wildfire smoke that drifts past his studio windows.
‘The series began about two years ago when my partner and I moved into our newly constructed house,’ Huckins tells designboom. ‘In our primary bedroom, we have a very large, east facing window that is flanked with large curtains. Every morning, we see a beautiful sunrise coming in through the middle slit where the left and right sides meet. The idea began there, but the series evolved into its current state of wildfires when one morning the sunrise was unusually more orange. The Canadian wildfire smoke had drifted down and blanketed much of the Northeast, and I thought this would be an interesting direction to take the series. Combing the comfort of home, the curtains, with the worsening effects of climate change.’
War Cloud and Floral Blue Curtain
Shawn Huckins FRAMES DISASTER WITH THEATRICAL STAGING
By isolating disaster behind the language of domestic interiors and theatrical staging, the exhibition dissects how modern crises are digested by the public. Fire and smoke are rendered with precise material intelligence, acting as concrete realities rather than abstract symbols. The luminous palette draws the eye, yet the heavy painted curtains ensure the viewer cannot ignore the artificiality of their vantage point. The resulting canvases ask the audience to confront their own passive consumption of catastrophe, safely viewing the world’s deterioration as just another image on a screen.
Wildfire Sunset Behind Sheer Curtain, 2026, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches