Next Generation

Although ‘New Kid in Town’ - Gathering is not quite as new as it was two years ago, it is still a newcomer for a gallery. Five artistic positions are now firmly anchored in the programme, including Tamara K.E. and Emanuel de Carvalho. The 38-year-old Alex Flick describes his gallery profile as succinctly and precisely as ‘Radical practices’. He is not concerned with age, origin, nationality or gender: ‘I am interested in artists who reflect and express the world in the most enduring and powerful way’. The Gathering exhibition programme also includes well-known names such as Isa Genzken, Louise Bourgeois and Claes Oldenburg. It is therefore logical that Alex Flick does not describe himself as an emerging gallery, despite his constant search for new positions.

Having grown up with his mother in England, Alex Flick already had a special connection to art at a young age. Of course, this was also due to his father Mick Flick, who amassed one of the world's largest collections of contemporary art, which was housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin for many years. After school, Alex Flick moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a junior assistant at Studio Paul McCarthy. ‘That changed and shaped my whole definition of art,’ he says today. His next stop was film school in New York, where he studied documentary film. He made social studies inspired by McCarthy, for example about a village in South Carolina in the shadows of American society. ‘My other hero at the time was Werner Herzog,’ he summarises this six-year discovery phase, at the end of which he enrolled at Goldsmiths in London to become a visual artist.

But this also turns out to be a diversion, albeit a much shorter one. Alex Flick soon realised that he enjoyed working on the other side, with and for artists, much more. He learnt the ropes from scratch at the mega gallery Hauser & Wirth, where he set up the new locations in downtown Los Angeles and Bruton Somerset. There is hardly a better school for a future gallery owner: ‘I have worked in every role in the gallery, from technician to salesperson’. There he also works closely with artists such as Christoph Büchel and Jason Rhoades, which gives him the confidence to open his first own project space UNIT9 in East London in 2016. It functions as a kind of mini-gallery and is the precursor to Gathering. After twelve exhibitions, it came to an end shortly before the coronavirus pandemic, as the building in which the project space was located was due to be demolished. Alex Flick used the time that followed intensively to fine-tune his business plan for Gathering and look for suitable premises. The gallery finally opened in London's Soho district in 2022 with a show by Turner Prize winner Tai Shani.

A second location has since been added in Ibiza, in the north of the island. Two floors are used there, which are supplemented by a restaurant and a bar. Flick came up with the idea during the second lockdown when he was on holiday on the island with his daughter. It was less the beauty of the surroundings than the clearly recognisable lack of contemporary art on the island that played a role. Flick was sure that there was plenty of potential for buying art on Ibiza, given the many wealthy people with second homes, but first he wanted to gain a foothold in an art metropolis like London. Today, he is very happy with both locations, which also have a great deal in common. One element that unites them, for example, is the age of his collectors. At 35 to 50 years old, they are significantly younger than those in other galleries.

Even though his father's collection influenced him in many ways, Alex Flick makes his own independent artistic decisions - even as a collector. Anything else would be surprising, given the two generations that separate father and son. Nevertheless, his father supports him wherever possible, for example lending him works from his collection for exhibitions such as ‘Painting Not Painting’ with Stefan Brüggemann and Bruce Nauman. Alex Flick began collecting during his project space phase, mostly acquiring positions that he himself represents: ‘I maintain that if a gallery owner doesn't collect a little within his means, then that poses a problem. Because collecting is part of passionately representing a position.’

What Alex Flick appreciates about German collectors is that - unlike those from the USA - they are traditionally less market-led and think more strategically in the long term. Consequently, he will be present twice with Gathering in the Rhineland in autumn 2024. At the DC Open as a partner at Kunstraum Echo and then as a NEUMARKT participant at ART COLOGNE. ‘I really like the Rhineland style, which is also cosmopolitan. Galleries like Buchholz, Sprüth Magers and Gisela Capitain are heroes for me, whose programmes are the ultimate.’ But he also emphasises his friendly relationship with younger Cologne galleries such as Khoshbakht or Drei: ‘I very much hope that we can also inspire the public of our generation’.

Incidentally, Alex Flick is not the only son of a famous collector to be successful in the gallery business. Also represented in the NEUMARKT sector of ART COLOGNE this year will be the Berlin gallery Super Super Markt, founded in 2022 by Julius Jacobi, the son of Cologne collector Georg Jacobi and founder of the BRAUNSFELDER FAMILY COLLECTION.