Galerie Nagel Draxler

About the Gallery
Galerie Nagel Draxler (formerly Galerie Christian Nagel) was founded in Cologne in 1990 and operates in Cologne and Berlin. We are proud to be a gallery that has a history, a present and a future. An emphasis lies on an established generation of artists, that has mainly been showing with us since the beginning and whose work has been strongly influential for following generations. Our “mid career” artists such as Kader Attia or Michael Beutler for instance, take part in defining the artistic discourses of our times. Finally, with a young generation, comprising artists that sometimes have their first gallery presentation with us, we meet the challenges of tomorrow. We see it as our great privilege, to be able to give these younger artists a context rooted in recent art history.

The opening exhibition 1990 in Cologne was Cosima von Bonin’s first solo show. In the course of a strong orientation towards the new institutional critique we welcomed Michael Krebber, Joseph Zehrer, Christian Philipp Müller, Andrea Fraser, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Heimo Zobernig, Mark Dion, Renée Green, Clegg & Guttmann, Stephan Dillemuth, Kai Althoff, Josephine Pryde, Merlin Carpenter and John Miller. With Martha Rosler we represent one of today’s most important political artists. Her groundbreaking feminist positions reach back to the 60s. During the 2000s we began to show a younger generation including Stephanie Taylor, Kalin Lindena, Stefan Müller, Jan Timme, Nairy Baghramian, Lutz Braun, Sven Johne, Rachel Harrison, Sterling Ruby and Michael Beutler. Gang Zhao and Kader Attia are artists of bilateral heritage who reflect on Western positions from a transcultural perspective. In 2010/2011 we added Belgian artists Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Guillaume Bijl to our program. Anna Fasshauer, Egan Frantz, JPW3, Sayre Gomez, Luke Willis Thomspon and Christine Wang joined us more recently. With an exhibtion of works by Günther Förg, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Martin Kippenberger and Heimo Zobernig in 2016 we opened Nagel Draxler Kabinett Berlin.

In the extensive field of contemporary art, we also dedicate ourselves to engaging with the coming generations. Since 2011 we have been exhibiting artists that struck our attention and who are at the very beginning of their careers in the REISEBÜROGALERIE (Travel Agency Gallery), such as Peter Wächtler, Adam Harrison, Julia Haller and Anna Fasshauer. Mark von Schlegell and Oone-Léa von Maydell have curated shows, with graduates from the Frankfurt Städelschule among others.