Six must-see exhibitions at the DC Open

Open to the world of art? 

The art scene in the Rhineland is world-famous. Especially in September, when the new exhibition season begins, one art event follows the next. The DC Open, the gallery tour in Düsseldorf and Cologne, is firmly inscribed in the scene's calendar and will be held for the 14th time next year. From September 3 to 5, 56 galleries, museums and off-spaces in both cities will present their exhibition highlights of the year. One-and-a-half-hour free (!) gallery tours take small groups of no more than ten participants to the most exciting art venues in the two cities and let them explore them. Curious? The preview of all participating galleries begins on Friday, September 3, from 1 pm and continues into the evening at 9 pm. On Saturday, the galleries will be open from 1 pm to 7 pm and on Sunday from 1 pm to 5 pm. We have filtered out six Düsseldorf highlights of the DC Open for you.  

Ando Future Studios 

Exciting things are already happening on the site where Japanese star architect Tadao Andō will be building a new landmark for Düsseldorf in the coming years: the future construction site in the north of the city is Germany's largest interim use project: Ando Future Studios, the interim name of the site, promises interdisciplinary encounters within the creative scene. As part of this year's DC Open, there will be three art exhibitions on the new cultural campus. These include the video installation "Eurydice" (2018) by Kandis Williams, which is being shown in Düsseldorf for the first time and is part of the Julia Stoschek Foundation's five-day art intervention "Out of Space - Düsseldorf Variation". In her two-channel video installation, Williams addresses the invisibility of black bodies in society. In addition, the Ando Future Studios resident artists Daria Nazarenko, Aurel Dahlgrün and Tomas Kleiner will be offered a stage with "Solid with a Chance of Æroscaping". The central work, a collaboration between all three artists, draws on the history of the site and incorporates abandoned plant systems from the commercially used site, which was once home to a car dealership, as industrial artifacts. Last but not least, the Ukrainian photographer Vera Blansh presents "Aftertime", a photographic documentation of the war. Blansh actually specializes in fashion, but in this exhibition she documents the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in touching black and white photographs. 

Gallery Max Mayer 

"Tit for tat" is a principle of game theory. And it is the title of an exhibition at Galerie Max Mayer in the Schmela Haus, for which artist Maximiliane Baumgartner has developed a new series of works. In her paintings and installations, Baumgartner explores the links between philanthropy and the art market, the associated neoliberal contexts and the art market's growing interest in education. For the current exhibition, she worked with H-pavers, among other things, thus creating a link between the Schmela House designed by Aldo van Eyck in 1971 and the playgrounds for whose "reinvention" the Dutchman is famous. The fact that Baumgartner reacts to the location of the exhibition with her works is nothing new. In the case of the Schmela Haus, however, it is particularly exciting. Gallery owner Max Mayer moved in here in 2020. The narrow, multi-storey building is considered to be Germany's first gallery building, which was built in 1971 as a combined gallery and residential building for the then highly influential gallery owner Alfred Schmela. In this respect, not only Maximiliane Baumgartner's exhibition but also the exhibition venue are a must-see for art lovers. 

Art & Thinkers 

The stop at Rainer Kunst and Meike Denker's gallery becomes a holistic, sensual art experience. In addition to the works on display, it is the lyrical sound work "The Fruit Changes, the Garden Remains" by artist Klara Kayser that captivates visitors. "Dreams, Return" is Klara Kayser's first solo exhibition at Kunst & Denker Contemporary and transforms the gallery into a symbolic garden in which the daily sensory overload comes to an end and the viewer's attention is drawn to their own inner self. In Klara Kayser's multidisciplinary works, which place phonetic and photographic elements in an unexpected context with plastics and ceramics, the concretely visible merges with dreams and memories. "DREAMS, RETURN!", for example, are the words formed from flower petals in the photograph "come back to me". In the four-part series "The Fruit Changes, the Garden Remains", the poems written by Kayser can only be experienced visually in the dark: as white screen prints on reflective adhesive foil, the works look like monochrome surfaces in daylight. In the dark, however, black lettering appears on a neon-lit background.  

Gallery Konrad Fischer 

The work of Düsseldorf-based photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher is known worldwide. What is new, however, is that a building material is at the center of an exhibition dedicated to them. With 39 large-format individual images and two exemplary typologies, "Concrete" at Galerie Konrad Fischer focuses on the industrial buildings photographed by Bernd and Hilla Becher, which were largely built from concrete. The show demonstrates both the diversity of industrial forms in the Bechers' work and the enormous versatility of the building material, whose solidity is not only reminiscent of medieval fortresses and bunkers, but also makes open, slender tower buildings possible. Like the famous Bechers, it is impossible to imagine the international art scene without their lifelong friends and companions Dorothee and Konrad Fischer. When they presented Carl Andre in their first exhibition in a small room in Düsseldorf's Neubrückstraße in October 1967, minimal art and conceptual art were virtually unknown in Europe. Subsequently, avant-garde artists such as Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Sol LeWitt, On Kawara, Lawrence Weiner, Hanne Darboven and Robert Ryman made their first European appearances with the art dealer couple, whose pioneering spirit had a decisive influence on the reception of art in Germany. So here too, as in the case of Max Mayer, a visit is doubly worthwhile.  

Benden & Ackermann 

Hardly any other couple in the art world had a greater auratic presence than Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and anyone who has ever experienced one of their works in the flesh can count themselves lucky. Because the experience never lasted longer than two or three weeks. Then the shells came off the Reichstag in Berlin, the pink polypropylene fabric of the "Surrounded Islands" off Miami and the floating jetties in Lake Iseo disappeared. "Nobody can buy these projects, nobody can own them, nobody can charge admission," said Christo, who liked to flirt with the fact that his ideas were completely "useless". In fact, there was no practical or economic benefit, only the audacity of the idea: "Our work is about freedom," the two proudly stated. The fleeting and transient nature of the attractions was part of their beauty. What remains for posterity, however, is a wealth of drawings, graphics, photographs and collages, some of which were created during the planning phase. These small works touch their viewers as artistic memories of phenomenal events and can be seen twice in Düsseldorf these days. Firstly, during the DC Open at Galerie Benden & Ackermann and secondly, just a few days later, a comprehensive show opens at the Kunstpalast. There, the exhibition traces the art-historical development of Christo and Jeanne-Claude from the mid-1950s to the present day and presents their early artistic work created in France in the context of works by companions. 

As in the front 

Another high-calibre artist in the DC Open program is Richard Deacon, winner of the Turner Prize, who is showing a drawing, six new sculptures and prints in an exhibition in the temporary exhibition space Da in die Front on Birkenstrasse. The group of stainless steel sculptures, each displayed on its own stand, are reminiscent of abandoned shoes or footprints and relate to Deacon's references to tracks and traces as evidence of their respective times. The fossilized tracks of humans and animals in particular served as inspiration for the Welshman. "The sculptures seemed to be both object and track," says Deacon, who taught as a professor at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 2009 to 2015, about his works on display here. The fact that the superstar Deacon, who had a major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2014 and has realized commissioned works in public spaces worldwide, has chosen a well-hidden backyard in Düsseldorf-Flingern speaks for him - and for the exhibition organizer. The sculptor Matthias Grotevent is the creator of the concept space Da in die Front and formulates a new kind of interaction here. Da an die Front is his very personal approach to entering into a collegial dialog, with the statue forming the intersection of the works of various artists on display. Our insider tip!  

Cover picture: Da in die Front; Richard Deacon, Shroud, 2018, ink and pencil on paper, 21 x 54 cm, photo: Richard Deacon