Six avant-garde galleries you can't miss 

The young savages 

Düsseldorf is the epicenter of international art - and the lush gallery scene reflects this in a multifaceted way. Especially the young art dealers enrich the cultural life of the city immensely and provide the individual spice with their portfolios. We take you on a discovery tour off the beaten track and tell you which stations you should definitely visit. Who is shaping the new art mile Birkenstraße in Flingern with his gallery?In which backyard are new worlds opening up? Let yourself be carried away, inspired or even tempted to buy. With the right nose, you might discover the future Gerhard Richter.    

Linn Lühn 

In recent years, Birkenstrasse in Flingen has become a veritable gallery hotspot. There, Linn Lühn shows international positions of contemporary art in a former beverage warehouse. Lühn, who is an artist herself, came to Düsseldorf from Cologne in 2011. She currently represents twelve international emerging and established artists*. She deliberately works closely with this rather small number of artists, including Dike Blair, Sarah Braman, William N. Copley and Florian Baudrexel. At irregular intervals, she also shows representatives of an older generation who are not yet so well known to a wider audience. Lühn is actively involved in the cultural scene in the Rhineland and is co-founder and editor of "Cahier," a quarterly magazine founded in 2008 that provides information about contemporary art in the Rhineland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. 

Wild Palms 

In a backyard on Gerresheimer Straße, the big wide world awaits. The focus of the young gallery wildpalms is art from North, Central and South America. The background? Jorge Sanguino, who founded the art venue together with his partner Alexandra Meffert, comes from Colombia. The themes at wildpalms are global: environment, social responsibility or sustainability. These are issues that young artists on both sides of the Atlantic are concerned with today - and that will also affect future generations. wildpalms also raises its own voice on many issues relevant to art, society and the environment: texts and podcasts for international media have already contributed a great deal to making Latin American artists known in Germany. The fact that, in addition to the artistic position, the written word carries great weight in the gallery is also demonstrated by its name. It quotes the book of the same name by Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.   

BOA 

BOA stands for "based on art". To live up to its name, the gallery on Birkenstraße rests on two pillars. On the one hand, Dunja Evers and Thomas Mass specialize in the trade of international contemporary and pre-modern Asian art as well as antique ceramics. On the other hand, the two are artistically active themselves. They have already exhibited in Europe, the USA and Japan, curated exhibitions and advised customers on buying art. Their wealth of experience forms the basis at basedonart. "Our goal is to present exhibitions that show artistic connections across time and culture," Evers and Mass describe their philosophy. In this way, the gallery initiates a cross-cultural dialogue that simultaneously strengthens the individual artistic identities and positions on display. "We want to provide a path of exploration through our curatorial work that contributes to the transcultural narrative." A real experience and definitely worth the short trip to Flingern.  

Max Meyer 

The young gallery owner Max Meyer initially began his work in 2011 without a physical gallery. Forsaking convention, he organized his exhibitions in numerous changing locations around the city in the first few years - the art world loved him for it. Since the fall of 2020, however, Mayer has traded the vagabond life for a permanent home and, together with his father, the famous art dealer Hans Meyer, has taken up residence in the legendary Schmela Haus behind the Kunsthalle. The narrow multi-story house is considered Germany's first gallery building, built in 1971 as a combined gallery and residential building for the gallery owner Alfred Schmela, who was very influential at the time. Max Mayer has moved into the lower floor and shows exhibitions with international greats such as Melanie Gilligan, J. Parker Valentine and Nicolás Guagnini as well as emerging artists* such as Flora Klein, Sarah Kürten or Maximiliane Baumgartner. The young positions stand in inspiring contrast to the works of established artists such as Nam June Paik, which father Hans Mayer presents on the upper floors of the multi-generation house.  

Lucas Hirsch 

In a former copy store on Birkenstraße, young gallery owner Lucas Hirsch has found a home for his artists' work. "There are a lot of white cubes in the city that are all clean and tidy, we wanted to stand out from that," he explains of the somewhat rough ambience. "The space looks like it was found after a move-out, but we spent a lot of time making it look that way," Hirsch says, describing his interior design concept. The art dealer worked for ten years at the renowned Sies + Höke gallery before venturing out on his own in 2016. "With one exception, all the artists* I represent are around my age, so between 30 and 40 years old." Still, the spectrum is broad. From paintings created with the most elaborate old-fashioned techniques to the readymade, the spectrum ranges.  

Kadel Willborn 

The term "artists' artist" comes from the music scene and refers to artists who become the inspiration for other artists. Iris Kadel and Moritz Willborn fill this term with life by showing different generations, their positions and the cross connections. The gallery on Birkenstraße has been in existence since 2004, and the work ethos is characterized by lasting collaborations and the long-term support of estates. What all the artists represented here have in common is a questioning of the perception of reality, based on aspects of New Realism, Conceptual Art, Performance Art and Body Art. Young artists like Shannon Bool, Natalie Czech, Matthias Bitzer or Ayan Farah, but also established protagonists like Barbara Kasten, Ketty La Rocca or Inge Mahn contribute their part to the inspiring portfolio of the gallery. 

Cover photo: LINN LÜHN, Düsseldorf
Installation view Johannes Wohnseifer 'B- B- Bilder' 2020
courtesy: the artist & Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf
Photo: Moritz Krauth