Since 2021, Nisoproject has been organizing exhibitions between London and Paris. The gallery’s program, which focuses on the young international contemporary scene, also includes an annual showcase of overlooked twentieth-century artists. The first exhibition of its kind since the inception of the gallery, ‘Nakazato, Brusatin’ is an intergenerational dialogue bringing together a body of work from 1968-1971 of Japanese artist Hitoshi Nakazato (1936-2010) with a series of works by Colombian artist Daniel Brusatin (b. in 1989). 

Curatorial dialogues are at the heart of Nisoproject Gallery’s programming. This exhibition brings back to the limelight the work of an established and highly relevant yet under-represented artist in a carefully curated dialogue with a young contemporary artist who is particularly sensitive to his work. By anchoring Brusatin’s work to the timeline of art history and bringing Nakazato’s back to the centre of the contemporary scene, the exhibition not only shows the pertinence of these artists but creates a connection between the past, present and future. Exposing thus a timeless quest and oeuvre. 

Nisoproject is committed, amongst other interests, to show a keen and informed look at Japanese art
 of the last 60 years. The first exhibition organized by the gallery in 2021, ‘Komorebi’, was  a dialogue between young Japanese ceramicist Yuki Nara, and Daniel Brusatin. The famed essay on Japanese aesthetics, “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki, laid the curatorial structure for the exhibition. A confrontational dialogue on aesthetic values between East and West was embodied by the juxtaposition of Nara’s and Brusatin’s work. The gallery maintains close ties with Japan and is proud to collaborate with the Osaka-based Artcourt Gallery. 

Hitoshi Nakazato’s Ichinchiani series is a testimony to minimalism, and to challenging the traditionally engrained practices of art. “Why paint? What would a painting that rejected conventional concepts of painting look like?”. Nakazato’s puzzling reflections around traditional art-making were spurred by student turmoil against authoritative figures at Tamabi Art University, where he taught in the late 1960s. At a pivotal moment in his career, he sought to redefine the act of making by introducing into the painting process elements born of Japanese industry and architecture. The sumitsubo, a Japanese line marking tool, was his predominant technique. His characteristic monochromatic works of 1968-1971, which brought him international institutional recognition, are composed entirely of straight lines. Poetic and lyrical, spontaneous yet controlled, the laying of the pigment through snapping the sumitsubo on the surface of the canvas conjures all mark-making characteristics. The excess pigment scattered on the extent of the line provides a spontaneous dotted topography. 

With the same subversive energy of trying to redefine painting Brusatin expresses,“ If art is to survive
 in the collective consciousness, we must integrate craft, industry and poetry. Art cannot exist on the periphery, it must be part of nature and human architecture”. Resonating profoundly with Nakazato’s work, his subtle combination of colour, form and material creates a balance and tension between opposites, between the purity of an idea and the chaos of production, a constant dialogue between pathos and logos. Always striving to come closer to the Gesamtkunstwerk, the all encompassing, global work of art. In this series, the paintings are as much constructions or sculptures as they are paintings, and the installations are conceived as interdisciplinary liaisons. In his work, he uses materials from industry: a beam that held railway tracks, ropes that tied ships to land and pieces of cargo pallets. He combines them with ceramics and traditional elements of fine art. By painting with brushes, blowtorches or ropes, he seeks, like Nakazato, to disrupt practice and create new paths for poetry that link different facets of humanity. 

Press Release Nakazato Brusatin English.pdf

‘Nakazato, Brusatin’ is an intergenerational dialogue that brings together a body of work from 1968-1971 of Japanese artist Hitoshi Nakazato (1936-2010) with a series of works by Colombian artist Daniel Brusatin (b. in 1989).

Although colour exists within the physical world as an inherent part of objects, it seems to arrive and appear with light. It travels within a magical flow of vibrations and blesses a surface as it lands. 

This exhibition presents the works of three artists that seem to catch that hovering light. 

With the work of Michael Kaul, Nicky Hodge and Henry Hoffman, this show explores arrangements that, in their simplicity, become highly complex. Jewel-like hazes, misty blurs, and floating orbs form a kaleidoscopic equation of shape and colour. The exhibition is an invitation to tune into the subtle yet powerful considerations these three artists bring. Like musical composers, they create environments where notes of colour levitate in a constant resonance within the painting and the exterior context. 

The work of Michael Kaul seems to happen in front of our eyes; there is an inherent immediacy in constant motion. The process and hand of the artist are made very clear; Pigment shows its nature, and the viewer is privy to its mutations. In Nicky Hodge’s work, we find veiled environments of colour that reveal small moments of mystery within. Henry Hoffman, on the other hand, works within the relationship between colour-shape and the environment of the painting. He works on the iterations in a process that reacting upon itself, becomes self-generating. 

HÄNSEL + GRETEL 2019 Acrylic on Canvas Michael Kaul

Seedling 2023 Acrylic and Linen on Panel Henry Hoffman

Volute 2023 Acrylic on Canvas Nicky Hodge

VITAL SIGNS, 2020, Acrylic on Canvas Michael Kaul

Malice and Ice Cream 2023 Acrylic and Linen on Panel Henry Hoffman

Acolyte 2023 Acrylic on Canvas Nicky Hodge

hovering.pdf

An exhibition of hovering light with the works of Michael Kaul, Nicky Hodge and Henry Hoffman

The work of Purdey Fitzherbert and Lucy Whitehead at first glance exist in very different realms. 

Whitehead’s works are created in a more “traditional” sense; with oils in front of the canvas, they are born amidst hundreds of sketches. With the virtue of line, she explores the confines of the body and its relation to space and the viewer. In their translation into painting, she turns matter into flesh and flesh into matter. By cropping the figure and tuning into nuances of shape, tone and light, the body becomes landscape; yet figuration seems to disappear. 

Fitzherbert’s work, on the other hand, as she puts it, “somehow creates itself”. Large sheets of paper with pigments that pool, divide and converge, create a topography that echoes the micro and macroscopic views of creation. The laws of physics are given full rein to be, and in their freedom, they raise a fascinating question about abstraction and figuration. If figuration represents reality as we see it, isn’t the fact that the laws of chemistry and physics create on their own the ultimate figuration? Like the universe creating itself. 

From different roads, these two artists meet in the boundary between the abstract and the figurative. They exist in the liminal space that confronts ideas of creation. Their work creates cycles where body and matter are turned into landscape, landscape itself becomes matter, and matter seems to penetrate the viewer.

Midnight Oil, 2023 50 x 45 cm Lucy  Whitehead

Soft Falling Peach Tones with Yellow, 2021 Purdey Fitzherbert

Hard Feelings, 2023 50 x 45 cm Lucy  Whitehead

Bleached Sepia and Burnt Sienna Tones, 2021 Purdey Fitzherbert

Pursuit’s Forgotten Dream, 2023 45 x 40 cm Lucy Whitehead

Strong Cracked Cobalt with Moss Green, 2021 Purdey Fitzherbert

Strange Overtones, 2023 40 x 30 cm Lucy Whitehead

Watery Ultramarine with Warm Umber, 2021 Purdey Fitzherbert

Nothing Is As Good As They Say It is, 2023 45 x 40 cm Lucy Whitehead 

Cycles.pdf

Dialogue is the core of Nisoproject. Whether this is chronological, drawing a line between contemporary and historically relevant artists, a social dialogue that highlights the resonance between different cultures, an artist with any particular subject, or in this case, the dialogue between two young practising artists. From these conversations and this virtue we further language and anchor ourselves in culture. 

The collection we are presenting here and the dialogue that arose seems
 to have started before it did. Although contemporaries and trained simultaneously in Florence, these two artists, who lived in the same neighborhood and whose studios today are a stone-throw away from each other met for the first time in the conception of this exhibition. Daniel Brusatin and Guy Haddon Grant apart from having highly compatible aesthetics, both navigate subjects of death and rebirth, cycles and seasons, creation and destruction, the importance of accidents, a keen focus on materiality and an overall love for the process and the poetry behind it all. We believe words here become superfluous, and the dialogue between their works and insight into their practices weave a rich and complete tapestry we are proud to share. 

Cloud Totem I, 2018 280 x 70 x 70 Guy Haddon Grant

Cloud Study V, 2020 280 x 200 cm Guy Haddon Grant 

Cloud Totem II, 2019 192 x 35 x 35 cm Guy Haddon Grant 

Petroglyph V, 2021 42 x 32 cm Daniel Brusatin 

Intersections, 2021 52 x 42 cm Daniel Brusatin 

Iron Petroglyph, 2021 25 x 20 cm Daniel Brusatin 

Dust to Dust presents a dialogue on poetry and materiality featuring the work of Guy Haddon Grant, who makes his debut with the gallery, and Daniel Brusatin.

Khemeia is an exhibition of amalgamation. Curated by Daniel Brusatin it will bring together the work of Olivia Bax, Arturo Ianniello and Arthur Cohen whose practices exist between industry, craft and poetry. 
Taking its name from the first known word for alchemy we are delighted to show the languages of three artists that with objects of the mundane create a poetically infused unity. 

khemeia.pdf

Khemeia is an exhibition of amalgamation. Curated by Daniel Brusatin it will bring together the work of Olivia Bax, Arturo Ianniello and Arthur Cohen whose practices exist between industry, craft and poetry.

NISOPROJECT will present the first exhibition of Daniel Brusatin (Colombian, b. 1989) in Paris. On view from October 19th to 25th 2022, Daniel Brusatin: Malaké will bring together nearly 100 works set in a 255 sqm gallery located at 75, rue de la Fontaine au Roi 75011, charting the artist’s multidisciplinary practice comprising of sculpture, painting, and stain glass. His largest show in scale to date, Malaké explores the influence of newly found sacred cave paintings in Colombia to the artist’s ongoing investigation on the expressions of mediums such as wood, burlap and glass through the act of burning, carving, and blowing.

MALAKE EXTENDED PRESS RELEASE ENGLISH.pdf

NISOPROJECT will present the first exhibition of Daniel Brusatin (Colombian, b. 1989) in Paris. On view from October 19th to 25th, 2022, Daniel Brusatin: Malaké...

Komorebi: Between Shadow and Light explores Japanese and Western aesthetic values as discussed by Junichiro Tanizaki in his celebrated essay In Praise of Shadows. Through the works of Colombian artist Daniel Brusatin and Japanese ceramicist Yuki Nara, this exhibition seeks to highlight the particular kind of beauty found in the relationships between light and darkness, and nature with the human element.

KOMOREBI EXHIBITION TEXT  (2).pdf

The Japanese word Komorebi refers to the special kind of beauty (...)

NISOPROJECT

NISOPROJECT

16.10—26.10.23

16.10—26.10.23

19.09—01.10.23

19.09—01.10.23

06.07—22.07.23

06.07—22.07.23

14.06—01.07.23

14.06—01.07.23

12.04—30.04.23

12.04—30.04.23

19.10—25.10.22

19.10—25.10.22

20.10—31.10.21

20.10—31.10.21

NISOPROJECT

NISOPROJECT

16.10—26.10.23

16.10—26.10.23

19.09—01.10.23

19.09—01.10.23

06.07—22.07.23

06.07—22.07.23

14.06—01.07.23

14.06—01.07.23

12.04—30.04.23

12.04—30.04.23

19.10—25.10.22

19.10—25.10.22

20.10—31.10.21

20.10—31.10.21

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