Known for creating profound artistic statements from the simple and often overlooked aspects of life, Kejian Sun is an artist who draws inspiration from the everyday world. It’s like transforming ordinary things, like chairs, into vessels of human emotion, interaction, and memory. At the same time, he captures nature’s powerful cycle. Sun explores the complexities of human experience through his three series — Seat series, The Stillness, and Spring — revealing deeper layers of existence through both quiet stillness and chaotic transformation.
Sun’s Seat series is a collection of paintings that portray chairs as more than just functional objects. In Sun’s view, chairs are silent witnesses to human life, encapsulating solitude, presence, and absence. Each chair in this series has its own narrative, embedded in its very form. It is often overlooked objects in daily life, such as chairs, that become symbols of human interaction—capturing moments of waiting, conversing, and contemplating. Through his expert manipulation of light and shadow, Sun gives life to these chairs, allowing them to tell the stories of those who have sat upon them, the lives they’ve touched, and the emotions they’ve absorbed over time.
It’s different settings for Sun’s chairs, but it’s all about their quiet, powerful presence as silent observers. Each chair is carefully rendered, like a storyteller of fleeting moments. The weight of waiting is palpable in the way an empty chair seems to carry a heavy silence, while the echoes of past conversations linger in the soft shadows cast across its surface. As each chair symbolizes the human figure it once held and the emptiness left behind, the tension between presence and absence forms the heart of the series. This juxtaposition invites viewers to contemplate the deeper stories hidden beneath these seemingly mundane objects.
In The Stillness, the focus shifts to abstract representations of peace and serenity. Each piece is 12 cm x 12 cm and created in September 2019. The Stillness distills human presence into minimalist, abstract forms, unlike the Seat Series, which evokes human presence through objects. With muted colors and subtle light and shadow, Sun captures fleeting moments of tranquility to invite viewers to pause and take it all in.
As a visual meditation on calm, every piece in The Stillness is calming. Sun’s soft, abstract shapes and delicate contrasts create a sense of serenity, letting viewers dwell in quiet, reflective spaces we don’t notice in our busy lives. In order to create timeless art, he freezes ephemeral moments of peace. Throughout this series, Sun reminds us of the beauty of simplicity and stillness, qualities easily overlooked in today’s fast-paced world.
In stark contrast, Sun’s Spring series erupts with untamed, chaotic energy. Each 40cm x 40cm piece captures the violent rebirth of nature, rendering the renewal process through a bold interplay of color and texture. The vivid yellows and deep blues in the series symbolize the clash of forces that occurs as winter transitions into spring, where new life emerges from the decay of the past season.
It captures the unpredictable surge of growth and renewal in abstract forms in Spring. In these works, light and dark combine, blur, and dance across the canvas, depicting nature’s intense cycle of transformation. There is a strong emotional response to the visceral energy. Through the use of color, Sun emphasizes the contrast between life and decay, emphasizing how existence is cyclical.
With Spring, Sun explores the duality of renewal, where beauty and violence coexist in nature’s process of transformation. The series immerses viewers in an emotional landscape where the remnants of decay and the surge of new life exist in constant motion. In this sense, Spring is more than a celebration of rebirth; it’s a reflection on the power and intensity of change itself.
As a whole, these three series illustrate Kejian Sun’s remarkable ability to capture stillness and motion, quiet introspection and explosive energy. Sun transforms everyday objects into powerful symbols of the human experience in his Seat Series, turning chairs into fleeting moments’ storiestellers. In Stillness, abstract forms invite a deeper connection to simplicity, offering a serene space for reflection. And with Spring, Sun presents the raw, unpredictable energy of nature’s cycles, creating vivid representations of growth and decay.
Throughout Sun’s art, stillness and movement, presence and absence, decay and renewal are all inextricably linked to life’s complexity. Through his work, we find meaning in objects, moments, and cycles that shape our everyday lives. He explores these themes in a compelling way—one that sticks with you even after you walk away from the canvas. Art like his reminds us that there’s always something deeper to discover, even in the quiet moments.