Who is coming to Cologne this year?

With its new appointment in November the ART COLOGNE is even more appealing to international and german galleries

Max Hetzler, Photo: Christopher Cunnigham

ART COLOGNE always in November in the future

From now on, ART COLOGNE will be held in the fall rather than in the spring. What could have been interpreted last year as a one-off reaction to the special pandemic situation has led to a strategic move: the next ART COLOGNE will take place from November 16 to 20, 2022, and subsequently November will remain the month when the world’s oldest art fair is staged.

A decisive factor in this decision by director Daniel Hug was the desire to make the art fair in the city on the Rhine even more appealing to international and domestic galleries in the future. And the move is already having an effect: the Benelux countries alone are noticeably more present this year. Sofie van de Velde, Plus One, and Keteleer from Antwerp not far from Cologne have confirmed their participation, while Baronian, Damian & the Love Guru, and Rodolphe Janssen, who is a member of the Art Cologne Advisory Board, are coming from Brussels. The Amsterdam-based gallery Smith Davidson, which specializes in Aboriginal art from Australia, will participate in Art Cologne for the first time.

Important returnees

With Öktem Aykut and Dirimart, who represent, among others, Sarkis, Shirin Neshat, and Renée Levi in Istanbul, the perspective widens even more. Moiz Zilberman, the third participant from Turkey, builds a bridge between the city on the Bosporus and Berlin, as his gallery is at home in both metropolises. Ben Brown Fine Art also forges intercultural dialog with its branches in London and Hong Kong and an exquisite list of artists, including Candida Höfer, Miquel Barceló, and Tseng Kwong Chi, who died in 1990.

Ben Brown is among those who did not make it to the fair last year due to the strict travel regulations but are now showing their reliability again. Daniel Hug can also point to other important returnees, including Max Hetzler and Kewenig from Berlin, Galerie Lelong (New York/Paris), Kamel Mennour (Paris/London), and Carl Kostyal (London/Stockholm). Gregor Podnar whose program specializes in Eastern European avant-garde art, will travel from Vienna, and Hunt Kastner from Prague. Bitforms and The Hole (New York), and The Pit (Los Angeles), all three newcomers to Art Cologne, have to travel a bit farther.

Premiere from Kiev

The Pit will show works in the Neumarkt sector, which is reserved for young, up-and-coming galleries. Among the other galleries in this section are Deborah Schamoni from Munich, Efremides from Berlin, and the Cologne galleries Drei and Jan Kaps.

Teminkova Kassela (Tallinn) and Voloshny, from Kiev, will celebrate their premieres at the fair. There will also be innovations in the classical modernist and postwar art segments in Hall 11.1. Daniel Hug points to the new planning in the hall, which can now accommodate galleries in the Art + Object section and others that focus on photography. Among them are the Paris-based Les Douches la Galerie, which represents Berenice Abbott, Vivian Maier, and Robert Frank.

Other newcomers are Galerie Judin (Berlin) and Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (Vienna), the latter focusing on Viennese Modernism with Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Not to forget Galerie Ruberl, also based in Vienna, which is passionately dedicated to the Viennese Actionism of Hermann Nitsch and Günther Brus.

The full list of exhibitors can be found here.

Text: Christiane Meixner