Nicolas Holiber opens show at Frevo New York

Nicolas Holiber opens his latest exhibition Glimmer at Frevo New York, a space that is making waves in both New York’s artistic and culinary scenes as an art gallery that conceals a passage to a Michelin-starred restaurant behind one of the artworks. Frevo is a New York City concept centred on creative food and art co-founded by Chef Franco Sampogna from Brazil and Bernardo Silva from Portugal.

Curated by Unit, the exhibition marks the first time in Holiber’s career he has exhibited a fully abstract series of works, with the show comprising eight new pieces that demonstrate the most up-to-date evolution of the artist’s exploratory process.

That his practice has arrived at abstraction has not come as a surprise to the artist:

“The paintings in this exhibition mark a new direction in my work. I wouldn’t define myself as an abstract painter per se, but I’ve developed a process that allows me to arrive at abstraction, rather than have it be the focus of my pursuit. It’s the process itself that really drives the work.”

The process that Holiber references is laborious, involving cutting, carving and ripping into wet paint, but the result is transformative, as evidenced in the show’s title, Glimmer. Like a mirage, light and colour combine into shifting surfaces from which images present themselves as punctured, kaleidoscopic visions.

The volume of paint Holiber physically man-handles around the canvas realises each artwork more as a sculptural object than a painting. The artist credits his study of sculpture as a vitally important detour in his artistic practice, honing his ability to craft and create with his hands, but his artistic roots in painting temper his sculptural forms into more purified expressions of paint, light, and colour.

Glimmer runs until 2 July 2024.