Price Database

report from 
cologne   


by Nina Borgmann
 






After the longest winter of my life I went 

to visit my home town of Cologne. I hadn't 

seen my family and my old friends for two 

years so it was an emotionally charged 

journey. Like most "Kölner," I have a very 

strong connection to the town. For us there 

is nothing like seeing the "Dom" again 

after a long absence. The cathedral sits 

on the edge of the river Rhine, blackened 

and scarred by the infamous smog of the 

"Cologne valley," but with the confidence 

of something made for eternity. 


I was full of plans and good will to make 

the most of my two-week stay. I hoped to 

see all of my friends, review the Cologne 

art scene, and take care of a lot of boring 

business like getting a new passport. My 

plans turned out to be much too ambitious, 

as my beloved, refreshingly crazy family 

took up most of my time. I especially 

enjoyed seeing my absolutely lovely 

godchild Hannah and all the dogs that are 

part of our family. After ten exhilarating 

and exhausting days, I decided to relax and 

go and see a few galleries and people I 

know, abandoning my original plan to 

produce an objective, broad report on the 

Cologne scene.


To my surprise, every gallery I wanted to 

see had moved to a new location, and it 

took me a while to get oriented. With my 

mind wandering ahead I often turned at 

familiar corners only to have to find my 

way back through hordes of flaneurs and 

shoppers. In Cologne one walks, one does 

not run. Finally I arrived at the newest 

cluster of galleries, which can be found 

above the UFA Palast, a movie theater 

specializing in Hollywood blockbusters, set 

on a commercial strip complete with Pizza Hut 

and American-style sports bars. Despite the 

populist environment, the gallery spaces in 

this `70s office building are appropriate 

for the art of the `90s. (Although somewhat 

ironically the stairway exudes the flavor 

of dreadful visits to the dentist).


The first dealer to move to this building, 

in 1995, was Christian Nagel. He favors 

artists who work in what has come to be 

called the "institutional critique": Mark 

Dion, Andrea Fraser, Christian Philip 

Müller and German spiritualist and painter 

Michael Krebber, among others. Nagel 

formerly headed the most rigidly "group-

dynamic" gallery, working with a fixed 

stable of artists; he now declares the 

stable gallery to be dead and has decided 

to become a "project" agent. The office 

spaces above the UFA Palast promise to be 

an appropriate setting. Currently on view 

is, "A Tale of Two Seas", a collaboration between 

Dion and Stefan Dillemuth, formerly known 

as the chief executive of the great 

Friesenwall 120, a defunct alternative 

space. The two collected a variety of 

flotsam on the beaches of the Northsea 

and Eastsea, catalogued the material 

and then presented it on back-to-back shelves

in the gallery with the detritus from 

the Eastsea on one side and the Northsea 

on the other. The scientific exactness of 

the presentation of the pathetic beachcombings

--old rusty metal parts, plastic bottle caps,

 little fish in jars with alcohol, legs of crabs

--created a strange feeling of sadness and loss. 

The beautifully labeled, old-fashioned jars 

reminded me of childhood visits to the 

Natural History Museum as well as 

afternoons on the beach happily collecting 

seashells, stones or anything the sea had 

thrown up. Seeing an account of what really 

swims in the oceans these days casts a 

shadow over that lost innocence as well as 

the romantic science of Natural History.



On the same floor with Nagel, Sabine 

Schmidt has opened one of the few Cologne 

galleries devoted to photography. She also 

organized a big exhibition in Berlin that 

presented historical documentary 

photographs by August Sander and 

Chargesheimer along with young contemporary 

artists such as Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte 

and Ute Behrend. 


A few flights below, Louis Campagna 

inaugurated a 240-square-meter gallery in 

March, very loft-like, lit with daylight 

from both sides, and with an elegant back 

room. He lives in the back, a set-up that 

is typical of New Cologne, where everyone 

is trying to save money. He even sublet 

some of his space to his girlfriend, who is 

an independent art consultant. A self-made 

man, L.C. opened his first gallery at the 

age of 22 in Frankfurt and moved to Cologne 

when the `80s heyday was coming to an end. 

His opening show at the new gallery 

building featured a group of young German 

painters, mostly abstract.



Also in the building is Markus Schneider, 

proprietor of Lukas and Hoffman Gallery, 

who is as concerned with his newly 

renovated space as he is with his soon-to-

be-born daughter. Since his ex-partner, 

Nikolaus Schaffhausen, left the gallery to 

become Germany's youngest player in the 

curator's circus (at Künstlerhaus 

Stuttgart), Schneider changed not only the 

frames of his glasses but also his gallery 

program. For the opening show in March, 

Swiss artist Stefan Altenburger desperately 

tried making sculptures, but all that was 

left was a video of his fruitless encounter 

with material forces. This tape was 

accompanied by a depressing Techno Beat and 

projected onto the wall, with the debris 

piled up around the space. It transmits 

quite believably the frustration and 

seeming impossibility of producing 

meaningful art these days. In the next room 

were photographs from two series called 

"Plastic Art" and "Installations." "Plastic 

Art" consists of images of discarded 

objects Altenburger has found on the 

street. "Installations" are photographs of 

a found situation, such as a pile of 

newspapers, netting around a tree, a little 

grass growing at a building, that 

Altenburger presents with a caption as his 

sculpture. Some of his photographs are 

amazingly beautiful, although on the whole 

the idea is rather unsatisfying. Which is 

maybe intended. I've been waiting for an 

artist to notice all the accidental art 

that is laying around in the city, that 

always seems so seductive. Once again the 

old question comes up: what makes an art 

piece? I am not so convinced that 

Altenburger's photographs cut it.


As a whole I thought that all four of the 

galleries had exceptional spaces and that 

the atmosphere was relaxed and hopeful. In 

a good mood, I walked the five minutes to 

the new gallery of Gisela Capitain, a 

veteran from the `80s, who also decided to 

relocate to Aachnerstrasse, across the 

street from an Off-track betting office. 

For her inaugural exhibition she selected 

New York survivor Christopher Wool. His 

East Village esthetics contrasted nicely 

with the delicate beauty of the space. The 

show was sparsely hung, so you were left 

with enough space to muse over the printed, 

brushed and sprayed paintings. Capitain's 

new lobby also offers a one of the best 

walls for paintings of all the new Cologne 

galleries. She plans to show Steven Prina, 

Larry Clark and Charline von Heyl, and is 

also on the look-out for younger artists. 

The "Büro Kippenberger" of our dearest 

Martin (who by the way just got married on 

March 4th, Congratulations!) has also found 

a home in her space. 


We had a glass of champagne and thus even 

more elated I went on to Rafael Jablonka's 

gallery. He is another established dealer 

who resisted the somewhat mindless trend to 

rush to Berlin, instead moving his 

operations around the corner to 

Lindenstrasse. With his nearly windowless 

space, Jablonka seemed to have made a most 

disappointing change. His group 

presentation of German and American artists 

such as Mike Kelly, Julian Schnabel, Hubert 

Kiecol and Imi Knoebel was rather 

expressionless and vague. His upcoming show 

will be work by appropriationist Sherrie 

Levine. 


A few days later, I visited my idea of the 

model space for New Cologne, the Daniel 

Bucholz Gallery. He inherited his father's 

antique bookstore, which is a book-lover's 

dream, and instead of closing it he decided 

to open a space behind it for contemporary 

art. The coexistence of both these spaces, 

especially with the backyard where one can 

sit and hang out, makes for a very pleasant 

afternoon. He was showing new work by Jutta 

Koether, which I missed because the 

exhibition gallery was under renovation 

when I was there. 



Then Easter broke out. In Germany it does 

so more violently than in New York. 

Everything was closed, and everybody went 

on vacation. So on Easter Sunday I went on 

a father-daughter trip to Düsseldorf to see 

a retrospective of the most German of all 

German painters, Markus Lüpertz, at the 

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen. Happily, 

my father and I happily agreed on 

everything, above all on our surprise at 

Lupertz's success. The show included all 

the Lüpertz paintings you never wanted to 

see--earthy expressionism goes Dubuffet, 

after zooming in on Picasso, along with a 

few artistic thefts from contemporaries 

like Baselitz and Penck. What began as a 

cheerful spoof of Donald Duck in 1963 ends 

in the epitome of heroic German legends, 

Parsifal.


Back in Cologne, we regained our breath and 

visited the Cologne Kunstverein and saw an 

installation by a promising young German 

artists, Tobias Rehberger. On his way to 

Africa he drew from memory some sketches of 

modernist chairs by Rietveld, Le Corbusier 

and Mies van der Rohe. He left these 

drawings with a group of African craftsmen 

who were asked to fabricate the furniture 

in their traditional manner (preserving the 

mistakes and imperfections of his 

drawings). Spread around the gallery space, 

the resulting chairs were a conceptual 

burlesque with a nod to Martin Kippenberger 

and a seasoning from Los Angeles-based 

artist Jorge Pardo.


Still, Rehberger's exhibition seemed 

emblematic of the state of the arts in 

Cologne. His work has promising ideas, but 

its realization didn't seem to fulfill its 

own potential. Despite my positive 

impression of the Cologne art scene, it has 

not yet regained the strength and vitality 

that made the city an art capital in the 

`70s and `80s. Also missing is a new 

generation of art collectors, who could 

easily revive the Cologne scene.

 
Personally I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere 

immensely and was reminded of the time when 

looking at art wasn't linked to stress and 

politics. It is a luxury to see a museum 

show without 15 elbows poking your ribs, 

although it also means the museum is making 

less money. I don't understand all the hype 

about Berlin as the new art center. Anyway, 

who would want to leave a town like Cologne 

where every third store is either a 

delicious bakery or a friendly bar?