Marais, Paris
Group Exhibition
Three the Hard Way
Long Story ShortDorian Cohen Othelo Gervacio Tommaso Nicolao Three the Hard Way brings together three painters whose origins diverge but whose vocabularies remain equally uncompromising. Dorian Cohen (b. 1987, Paris) trained in urban planning yet entirely self-taught as a painter, explores the architecture of daily life—public squares, gardens, familiar structures—through compositions that are at once rigorous and contemplative. Winner of the Fondation Colas Prize (2018) and finalist for the Sciences Po Prize for Contemporary Art (2019), his practice circles around time, presence, and the quiet beauty of the ordinary. Othelo Gervacio (New York) is celebrated for his luminous Mind Flowers series—real flowers collected, photographed, digitally manipulated, and then translated into paint. The works form a psychedelic herbarium that meditates on growth, decline, and the warped digital lens through which perception now passes. His paintings oscillate between devotion, fragility, and fleeting beauty. Tommaso Nicolao (b. 1976, trained in Venice and now based in New York) is a painter and artistic director, his work references the classical masters while exploring a variety of contemporary subjects. In this series he presents oils of puffer jackets and coats—human figures conspicuously absent, garments rendered with such precision they verge on abstraction. His works have been exhibited in Venice, Paris, and New York. Brought together under Three the Hard Way, these distinct pictorial languages converge, collide, and converse. The show stages a meditation on image, presence, and the stubborn vitality that keeps painting alive today.