We are delighted to announce we'll be participating at the Civilisations art fair in Brussels from 24-28 January 2024 with the exhibition "Minimania". We will be exhibiting at Rue des Minimes 3, Brussels, at Gallery Harmakhis.
Opening hours:
Wed. 24 January: 2 pm to 8 pm
Thu. 25 January: 11 am to 7 pm
Fri. 26 January: 11 am to 7 pm
Sat. 27 January: 11 am to 7 pm
Sun. 28 January: 11 am to 5 pm
“Mini-Mania” is a new idiom we coined to describe a fervent and enthusiastic passion for small-scale classical artworks from the African continent. Mini refers to a smaller size all these objects share, making them easy to handle and group with others; Mania is the recognizable feeling of an insatiable hunger to collect many examples of a certain type of object. Privately owned, opposed to artworks that served a whole community, the tactile nature of these miniatures has always made them highly coveted by collectors. Just as they were once employed in a very personal context, our intimate conversations with them bring strong satisfaction. A presumed contact with the original owner or the brilliant creator is easier established when handling a delicate small-scale work of art. As many sculptors will agree on, it is in the miniature one recognize the master, demanding all his craftsmanship to free a sculpture from its original block of wood, stone, ivory, or bone. The British artist Josef Herman (1911-2000) perhaps is remembered as the most mania-cal collector of miniatures. In an interview in “The Antique Collector” (September 1985, pp. 83-85) he replied when inquired about his fascination for miniatures: “The Greeks discovered space for us … the African universe is much narrower so instead of putting sculpture within this space they brought space into sculpture. I was always interested in monumentality on a small scale. Of course a large, monumental piece is very impressive, but monumentality is something much more – it is a synthesis of form. So my concern with the miniatures has two things. It is that I really love them, and that I think they are as great as miniatures of any more prestigious culture”. William Fagg, curator of the African section at the British Museum, later included several objects from the Herman collection in his 1970 publication “Miniature Wood Carvings of Africa” – one of the first dedicated to the subject. More recently, Antonio and Ana Casanovas inadvertently recollected Herman’s words with their thematic exhibition: “Gems. Monumental Miniatures from America, Pacific, South East Asia and Africa” during the 2009 edition of Parcours des Mondes. We are proud to continue this tradition of celebrating the great in the small!