Exploring painting as both subject and process with John Tun Sein at Aicon

Aicon presents John Tun Sein, a solo exhibition of abstract paintings by the eponymous late Indian artist, on view from June 18 – July 25, 2026. “Bringing together a focused group of works from 2007, the exhibition revisits a deeply concentrated moment in the artist’s practice, when painting itself became both subject and process,” Aicon notes in the show's official release.

Trained at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai under the guidance of Indian painter Prabhakar Kolte, Tun Sein developed a distinctive, abstract artistic language. His paintings embraced spontaneity through an exploration of colour and mark-making. “Kolte was once quoted as saying, ‘I paint first and see later, rather than see first and paint later’. Tun Sein’s practice may be understood in a similar spirit. However, unlike the heroic gestures often associated with Abstract Expressionism, his spontaneity was not driven by outward drama or theatrical intensity, but an internal mechanism designed towards formal tensions,” the art gallery notes.

The art exhibition presents mixed-media works on canvas board alongside larger acrylic paintings on canvas. “The small works carry the immediacy of studies, in hand with the distinction of a fully formed painterly world. In them, childlike marks, layered colour and seemingly casual gestures recall the freedom of Paul Klee, while resisting any fixed symbolic language,” the United States-based contemporary art gallery explains. The larger canvases, on the other hand, move fluidly between compression and expansiveness, form and abstraction.

Affectionately referred to by Kolte as ‘little Buddha’ for his quiet clarity and contemplative nature, Tun Sein created paintings that resist fixed narrative. “Instead, they sustained a magnetic visual presence through the lived experience of painting itself. The exhibition considers Tun Sein’s belief in painting as an ‘expanded totality’ that began in personal experience and extended outward through the work. His paintings do not explain themselves; they ask to be felt. In their restless marks and contemplative surfaces, they invite viewers into a space where painting becomes less an image than an experience of looking,” Aicon notes.