NIA Gallery

The artist is a formalist preferring traditional and conservative art with a twist. NIA Gallery is the embodiment of this perception that art should be beautiful and with a reason not exist as random concepts. In it walls will be art that is pleasing with sensibilities acceptable to formalist principles.

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Norjan Ismail Abbas

Norjan a Manila-based Filipino-Muslim. He is a graduate of University of the Philippines (College of Fine arts, Studio Arts Program in Painting, in 1995). He has traveled the U.S., Hongkong and has spent 5 months in Thailand from 2002 to 2003. Stayed in Shanghai teaching children English and Art classes. In 2008, he established Kid Arts Workshop that was modeled after Kids Gallery in Beijing, where he worked as an art teacher. His “Asian” art has gotten its influences from the temples in Thailand, to the modern energy of Shanghai and Beijing. Later on, it will be the basis for his promethean iterations of the legendary Sarimanok, which is  one of his thrusts major as an artist. By bridging the Formalism of the West with Asian theme of the Sarimanok, he seeks to create dynamism of “cultural” narrative that is waiting to be made visible by his art.