Preview: Wednesday 23 April 2025, 6-9pm

The Approach is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by London based artist, Jai Chuhan.

Jai Chuhan’s vibrant paintings depict the human body in abstracted room-like spaces. Using vivid cadmium pigments, Chuhan’s visceral visual language incorporates contorted limbs, raw flesh and quivering muscle to suggest bodies in struggle or in intimate embrace. The poses of the often-nude body are portrayed with smudged caresses and violent gestures to express tensions and ambiguities between genders. Chuhan’s portraits explore both alienation and belonging as well as the claiming of space and agency in relations between the self and others. There is a sense of empathy for small moments of fragility in human interactions, in a private world and yet the architectural surroundings act as if a stage for viewing. Working from life, photographs and personal memories, Chuhan’s paintings reconsider notions of voyeurism, eroticism, race and the gaze.

Jai Chuhan is an Indian-born British artist. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally in Italy, Belgium, Singapore and America, and in the UK at Tate Liverpool; the Barbican Art Gallery, London; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Ikon, Birmingham; Tramway, Glasgow; Arnolfini, Bristol; the Commonwealth Institute, London; Horizon Gallery, London; Waterman Arts Centre, London; and Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery London.

Forthcoming and previous solo exhibitions include: Dancer, Harbour House, Devon (2025); Jai Chuhan, Champ Lacombe, Biarrtiz, FR (2024); Small Paintings, Qrystal Partners, London, UK (2023); Paris Internationale with Champ Lacombe, Paris, FR (2023); Remodel: Painting Studio, Asia Triennial, Manchester, UK (2018); Decanting Desire, Liverpool Biennial, UK (2014) and Jai Chuhan: Recent Paintings, Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool, UK (2013). Her work is currently on view at Dundee Contemporary Arts as part of the Hayward Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, curated by Hettie Judah, and features in In our idleness, in our dreams, Niru Ratnam, London (2025). Her paintings and drawings are in the collections of the Tate, the Arts Council and Cartwright Hall in Bradford.