Aicon Art is pleased to present John Tun Sein, an exhibition of abstract paintings by the late artist. 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.

Trained in painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay, where Prabhakar Kolte was a formative mentor, Tun Sein developed an abstraction rooted in the primacy of the painterly act. 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. His work turned the painters’ hand back onto itself.

This exhibition presents that “formal expressionism” through a group of intimate mixed-media works on canvas board and 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 color, and seemingly casual gestures recall the freedom of Paul Klee, while resisting any fixed symbolic language. 

The larger canvases expand this vocabulary into broader fields of color and structure. Horizontal works open into atmospheric expanses, while the vertical formats suggest suspended architectures or interior scaffolds. Together, the works move between compression and expansion, form and formlessness.

Prabhakar Kolte once affectionately referred to Tun Sein as “little Buddha,” invoking the artist’s inward clarity and calmness. Tun Sein’s paintings did not seek to narrate the politics of the world, nor did they depend on declarative meanings. 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.

John Tun Sein was born in 1957 and died in 2024. He received his G.D. Art in Painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1985. He later received a Lalit Kala Akademi Research Grant Scholarship in 1988–89. His work was exhibited in India, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including presentations at Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai; Gallery Art Motif, New Delhi; Aicon Gallery, Palo Alto; Anant Art Gallery, Kolkata; Galerie Mueller and Plate, Munich; and Galerie Holmenshoeve, Slijpe, Belgium. He lived and worked for many years in Freiburg, Germany.

John Tun Sein is the final exhibition of Aicon Art at our 35 Great Jones Street location. After nearly 20 years in the space, our gallery is relocating to Chelsea. Please join us in October 2026 to usher in this exciting new chapter. 

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