Oana Ivan Gallery is pleased to announce Small is big, Bruno Suter’s first exhibition with the gallery, on view from February 12 to April 11, 2026

Small is Big is devoted to the most recent developments in Bruno Suter’s work and brings together large-scale paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The exhibition highlights a singular methodology at the core of his formal and conceptual research, in which drawing plays a foundational role and structures the transition from an intimate gesture to a fully deployed image.

Bruno Suter’s painting is figurative, yet its subject is deliberately removed from reality. Isolated and placed at the center of the composition against a white background, it is detached from any narrative context. This neutral ground establishes a distance, almost clinical, that allows the real to be observed and filtered.

The exhibition presents a group of drawings that function both as autonomous works and as the point of origin for the paintings. Emerging from a process of direct engagement, they bear witness to the immediacy of the gesture and to a transitional moment in the treatment of reality. From the abstract drawings of 1995, which explore the relationship between gesture and color, to the ink drawings produced in 2011, the line gradually approaches writing, eventually merging with the depiction of wild grasses and vegetal forms. More recent drawings mark a shift toward still life: a table, a vase, a few fallen petals, or a simple horizon line introduce a minimal context, while composition, floral harmony, and the energy generated by the interaction of colors become central.

Each painting originates in a small drawing on paper, which is then transferred onto canvas using the grid technique. This shift from an intimate scale to a monumental format does not alter the image but reveals its structure, rhythm, and expressive force. The precision of the gesture, the meticulousness of the transfer, and fidelity to the original model reflect a pursuit of truth and sincerity in the act of reproduction. This exactitude also embodies a form of generosity: by reproducing even the smallest details, splashes or glimmers of light, the artist fully shares his gaze with the viewer.

The series of extruded paint masses asserts the physical presence of the pictorial material. The white 
background, never entirely smooth, retains traces of its materiality, while paint itself is represented at an 
amplified scale, almost as a glorification of matter in its raw state, revealing its visual and tactile qualities. This oscillation between intimacy and expansion, between the original drawing and the completed painting, runs through all the works on view.

Following the exhibitions devoted to Peter Knapp and Gilles Bensimon, Bruno Suter’s exhibition clearly forms part of a continuity at the crossroads of art, communication, graphic design, and image-making. It extends a shared reflection on visual forms and their modes of circulation, while also revealing another essential dimension of Oana Ivan Gallery’s program: a network of genuine affinities, intersecting trajectories, and collaborations forged over time.