BEAUTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS INTERSECT IN ‘SLOW BURNS’
American artist Shawn Huckins examines humanity’s comfortable detachment from environmental collapse in large-scale paintings consisting of two distinct, conflicting layers of reality. Opening July 11 at K Contemporary in Denver, Slow Burn focuses on scenes of raging forest fires, smoke-filled skies, and “war clouds,” framed theatrically by surrealist trompe l’œil curtains. The heavy, hyperrealistic curtain seems pulled back enough to reveal the destruction behind it. This optical device creates a strict physical barrier on the flat surface.
Rather than plunging the viewer into ash and heat, the drawn curtains hold the audience in the theater seat, watching the environmental destabilization unfold through a mediated screen. Huckins invites viewers to watch the disaster as a staged spectacle, asking them to “address the increasingly mediated ways in which 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 FIRE AND WAR CLOUDS BEHIND SURREAL CURTAINS
Shawn Huckins has built a long-standing practice of interrogating national mythology and the complexities of contemporary American culture. Following recent institutional features, including a solo exhibition at Nashville’s Cheekwood Museum of Art, the New Hampshire-based painter continues to appropriate the visual syntax of 19th century romantic topography. While historical figures used this exquisite aesthetic to hide the harsh realities of territorial expansion, the works at Slow Burn completely overturn tradition. Pristine mountain ranges and valleys wear away under the weight of “war clouds” and thick fog, an execution directly informed by Canadian forest fire smoke drifting through his studio windows.
“The series started about two years ago when my partner and I moved into our newly built house.” Huckins tells designboom. “In our master bedroom, we have a very large east-facing window framed by large curtains. Every morning, we see a beautiful sunrise coming through the middle slit where the left and right sides meet. The idea started there, but the series evolved into the current state of the fires when one morning the sunrise was unusually more orange. Fire smoke in Canada had drifted in and covered much of the Northeast, and I thought that 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 FRAMING DISASTER WITH THEATRICS
Isolating the disaster behind the language of domestic interiors and theatrical sets, the exhibition analyzes how contemporary crises are assimilated by audiences. Fire and smoke are rendered with precise material intelligence, functioning as concrete realities rather than abstract symbols. The bright palette draws the eye, yet the heavy painted curtains ensure that the viewer cannot ignore the artificiality of their advantage. The resulting canvases ask the audience to confront their own passive consumption of destruction, safely viewing the decay of the world as just another image on the screen.
Wildfire Sunset Behind Sheer Curtain, 2026, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
