Of Minor Importance

16 Jul-15 Aug 2026

PV 15 Jul 2026, 6-8pm

Overview

Rooted in the 17th-century European hierarchy of genres – a system that placed history painting at the summit of intellectual and moral value while relegating still life, landscape, and animal painting to the margins – the exhibition revisits and unsettles this inherited order. Bringing together works of modern masters alongside contemporary painters, the exhibition traces a lineage of attention to the so-called “minor.” In these artists’ hands, what once were considered modest subjects - objects, interiors, animals, and landscapes - are used to address the urgencies of the present, from ecological crisis to shifting human-nonhuman relations and political uncertainty. Rather than reversing the classical hierarchy, 'Of Minor Importance' attempts to dissolve it, proposing a different set of values in which quiet observation, intimacy, and persistence rival spectacle and narrativism. What emerges is a space where the overlooked becomes essential, and where painting speaks most acutely to the conditions of its time.