Lost Profile Gallery’s reverent quality echoes through its sculptural forms and softly conducted light.
Artist, designer and vintage furniture dealer Oliver Wilcox first encountered the ‘profile perdu’ or ‘lost profile’ painting technique while in conversation with a Parisian gallerist—a traditional method in which a turned head obscures the profile, providing only minimal visual cues to convey a distinctive identity. This concept resonates through Nikolas Gurtler’s design of Wilcox’s Lost Profile Gallery. Distinctiveness lies in unique use of restrained elements: light and shadow conducted throughout sculptural forms.
Gurtler was briefed to design a space intersecting retail and gallery, futureproofed with flexibility for the evolving collection and exhibitions. Naarm-based in Brunswick, the rundown warehouse had “not an inch of exterior spared from graffiti”, Gurtler notes. Inside, vaulted ceilings and west-facing afternoon sunlight held potential.
Four gallery spaces meander like a series of portals, introducing a sense of compression and release. From a voluminous central space, visitors enter two more enclosed rooms with blue-painted brickwork showcasing lighting and vintage furniture, before emerging into an L-shaped gallery wall that hugs the perimeter.
