A new gallery opens in Milan: Ghiringhelli Art Gallery. It starts with Japanese art

From May 8 to June 27, 2026, Milan will host the debut of Ghiringhelli Art Gallery, a new exhibition project specializing in contemporary Japanese art, which opens with the exhibition Refracted Worlds. Contemporary Japan Through Multiple Lenses. The exhibition, conceived and curated by Nicola Ghiringhelli Forlani, will be set up at 20 Via Tortona, with opening scheduled for May 7 at 6 p.m.

The gallery was created as a pop up gallery, a temporary format designed to appear and disappear within Milan’s urban fabric, occupying different spaces and taking on different configurations depending on the projects hosted. The idea behind it is that of a flexible structure that nonetheless maintains a precise and recognizable curatorial line: to bring Japanese contemporary art, still little known to the Italian public, to Italy, outside of the most widespread stereotypes and far from an exclusively historical or museum reading.

The project was conceived by Nicola Ghiringhelli Forlani, a young entrepreneur who chose to combine his interest in art and travel in a new activity in the art market. Raised in a family context close to the art world, he built his path through an international education and several professional experiences among galleries and auction houses. From this path matured the intuition to focus on Japanese contemporary art, deepened by attending international fairs, observing the market, following auctions and developing personal research on the field.

After numerous trips to Japan, Ghiringhelli Forlani decided to turn this interest into a structured business project. The pop up gallery formula allows him to maintain a stable presence in Milan and Italy, but also to move frequently to Japan, closely following artists, galleries and market dynamics. Ghiringhelli Art Gallery thus presents itself as a mobile and specialized platform, built with the aim of creating a direct dialogue between the Italian public and Japanese contemporary art production.

The first exhibition, Refracted Worlds. Contemporary Japan Through Multiple Lenses, brings together seven Japanese artists, Kohei Nawa, Yukie Ishikawa, Kenjiro Okazaki, Mr., Ayako Rokkaku, Yuji Ueda, and Noritaka Tatehana, together with the Chim↑Pom collective from Smappa!Group. These are authors unpublished or almost unknown to the Italian public, personally selected by the founder to represent different modes of interpretation of the image in contemporary Japanese art. The artists involved work mainly with painting, drawing and surface, but they adopt very different languages: from pictorial layering to pop imagery, from the performative dimension to optical mediation, to matter and light. The stated goal is to offer an accessible yet critical experience, capable of opening up new possibilities for reading, international dialogue and collecting.

The title of the project, Refracted Worlds, introduces the concept of refraction as the interpretive key to the entire exhibition. The reference is to the physical phenomenon whereby a ray of light, passing through a prism, is deflected and broken down into multiple colors. Similarly, Japan and its contemporary artistic production are read as a single beam of light that, through different artists, is transformed into a plurality of visions. The result is a system of relationships in which each practice modifies the perception of the others. Surface, time, gesture and transformation become the common cores around which the exhibition itinerary is developed, designed to keep together theoretical research and readability for the public.

"More than a group show, Refracted Worlds is configured as an open structure, in which each work does not simply add a point of view, but modifies the viewing conditions of the others,“ says Nicola Ghiringhelli Forlani. ”The exhibition does not return an image of reality but exposes the ways in which it is constructed."

The theme of surface emerges prominently in the works of Kohei Nawa, born in 1975, in which vision is always filtered through mediation. His works introduce the viewer to a fundamental condition: the act of seeing always occurs through something that transforms perception. Different is the research of Yukie Ishikawa, born in 1962, whose canvases tell a layered temporal process. Her paintings are constructed at different moments of artistic practice, with overlays of ink and color transforming the surface into a space of accumulation where past and present coexist.

In contrast, Kenjiro Okazaki, born in 1955, develops works of high conceptual density, in which art history, architecture, mythology and geography enter into relationship. His method proceeds through a calibrated construction in which each sign takes on a precise function. The pop imagery often associated with Japan through manga and anime finds space in the works of Mr., born in 1969, who is considered one of the most recognizable interpreters of this aesthetic. His work shows how such visual codes act as cultural filters through which desires, traumas and social expectations are absorbed, mediated and normalized.

Ayako Rokkaku, born in 1982, also starts from imagery related to her own context of origin, but introduces a strongly performative and corporeal dimension. She paints directly with her hands and transforms painting into an immediate physical gesture, where color does not take on a decorative function but becomes an emotional impulse and direct presence. Yuji Ueda, born in 1975, works instead on ceramics as a space of confrontation with tradition. He uses a classic technique that is, however, modified through the inclusion of different and unexpected materials, capable of producing unpredictable results and redefining the relationship between artisanal memory and contemporary experimentation.

Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, founded in 2005, represents one of the best-known collectives in the recent Japanese scene. The group is recognized for an overtly political art practice that intervenes in public space and the social sphere. The works on display belong to the series A Hole Within a Hole, constructed as a metaphor for the absence and layering of the invisible: a reflection on a reality composed of overlapping layers, in which even what emerges remains only partially accessible. The exhibition closes with Noritaka Tatehana, born in 1985, whose work addresses the theme of cultural transmission in the present. In his works elements of Japanese tradition are reactivated through contemporary materials and new technologies, generating a reflection on how cultural heritage can be reinterpreted without simply being reproduced.

A new gallery opens in Milan: Ghiringhelli Art Gallery. It starts with Japanese art

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