Still life is about more than just the objects in front of you – composition and lighting do the heavy lifting, accounting for about 70 per cent of the impact. The rest is observation and execution.

In this solo exhibition, Nan offers his most recent still life paintings, following a tradition that dates back to ancient times. Representations of everyday items continue to beguile us as they ...

The Met advised us. Dutch still-life paintings omitted the “human cost of colonial warfare and slavery” that underlay the bounty these canvases documented, the wall labels warned.