We are pleased to present Of Minor Importance – a group exhibition bringing together nine international contemporary artists and the works of modern masters Fernando Botero, Georges Braques, Giorgio De Chirico and Giorgio Morandi. The exhibition unfolds across the gallery premises in London and the project space Domus Nostra in Rome, creating a moment for a unique intergenerational and transnational conversation.

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 – such as fruits, flower, common tableware and everyday objects etc– are used to address the urgencies of the present and our place in this everchanging world. Rather than reversing the classical hierarchy, Of Minor Importance attempts to dissolve it, proposing a different set of values in which quiet observation, humor, 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.

Helene Appel (b. 1976, DE) approaches still-life painting as a form of portraiture, where the focus shifts from an anthropocentric worldview towards the quiet presence of everyday objects. Rendered at a one-to-one scale with special paints and painting techniques, her subjects acquire a three-dimensional, sculptural presence and an empowering sense of autonomy that transcends the painted surface. Silas Borsos’ (b. 1989, CA) eclectic fruit arrangements appear playful and humorous at a first glance. Carefully staged and painted in soft colours, his oil on linen compositions acknowledge and contribute to the abundant symbolism of fruit through time, as both an expression of life and a constant reminder of the impermanence of life.

In his practice, Johnny Izatt-Lowry (b. 1995, Durham) deals with how imagery is processed in a digital age. Developed from a collection of stock, online images, he paints from memory creating a visual language made through the layered application of colour on crepe. There are no outlines to the objects depicted, they appear fuzzy as if the image on the surfaces was just about forming and already disappearing beyond our gaze. Starting from a similar point, Danielle Fretwell (b. 1996, US) is also interested in how we consume images in our digitally saturated world. Through hyperrealistic, meticulously details compositions she poses questions about the perception of truth and illusion within what stands in front of us. She begins her process by carefully arranging the subjects-objects in her studio, photographing them, and constructing new images that are visually seductive yet remain fundamentally inaccessible.

Sebastián Espejo (b. 1990, CL) blends abstraction, landscape painting, and figurative still life elements, working primarily on a small format. His layered surfaces are not immediately legible, yet they demand a slower pace and a deeper viewer engagement. These fragmented images become the connecting point between the visible, tangible reality and how our subconscious influences and reverberates it.

Scott Kahn (b. 1946, US) presents an never exhibited before still life painting from 1978. Both classical and contemporary, Kahn’s ‘Still-life with Appkes’ can be interpreted as an extension of the self and his lived experience of the quotidian. It is an early example of the artist’s oeuvre which in his own word ‘[…]is driven and inspired by my life as I live it’. Amedeo Polazzo (b. 1988, DE) takes this concept even further with his new work ‘Self-portrait as Carrot’ (2026) where an oversize painting of a carrot stand as tall as the artist himself. Polazzo’s subjects – apples, bananas or carrots, punctuate our everyday life, yet by means of repetition, scale and displacement, he transforms these elements from familiar to unconventional ones: turning the real world into an almost staged performance.

Miranda Webster (b,1991, NZ) paints from observation, allowing time to sit and connect to their subjects. Slowly accumulating detail over time, each tiny brushstroke turns into a manifestation of time, and defies expectations of high production and quick consumption. This slowness becomes a meditative experience and a caring act towards the painting. Moving between image and space, object and scene, Andreas Zampella (b. 1989, IT) constructs situations that appear slowed down, suspended in time and ultimately transformed into still life. In their immobility, the objects portrayed as well as acquired, as he paints on found bedsheet and kitchen cloths, take on a theatrical quality, continuing the artist’s research on the idea that everyday life is a continuous spectacle.

In Of Minor Importance, each artist—from the modern masters Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico, Georges Braque, and Fernando Botero to the contemporary artists—approaches the still life through radically different formal languages. Yet each turns to this enduring genre because it provides a space in which to explore fundamental artistic concerns, free from the distractions of narrative. Whether through observation, reverence, social critique, autobiography, slowness, or performance, these works ask us to look carefully and linger, gradually unfolding the relationships that exist between objects, bodies, histories, and ourselves.