Silk drapes opening onto misty sunsets, landscapes burning on the horizon, surfaces that look like fabric but turn out to be pure fields of colour. The painting of artist Shawn Huckins unfolds into almost hypnotic scenarios — and we have completely lost ourselves inside them.

Born in 1984 and based in New Hampshire, Huckins works on America: he loves it and criticises it in equal measure, with an irony that never tips into cynicism and a social awareness that runs through everything he makes. It shows most clearly in his best-known series — The American Revolution Revolution and The American ___tier — where he layers classic American portraiture and landscape with text taken directly from social media. What would George Washington have posted on Facebook? How would Lewis and Clark have documented their journey westward on Twitter? Shawn Huckins uses these questions as a lever to set the priorities of contemporary society against those of a simpler America, pressing on the way digital language is eroding our capacity for empathy and genuine connection.

In his more recent canvases the register shifts, but the tension remains. The natural landscape returns as a recurring element: forests at sunset, skies burning pink and orange, twisted trees against blazing horizons. Nature is never idyllic here — it carries the marks of what we are doing to it. Alongside these works, the compositions featuring satin silk drapes recall classic European painting, but the context is entirely American. Everything is too bright, too saturated, and perhaps a little too self-aware.