Callboys and Crocodiles

For years, the DC Open, the Düsseldorf Cologne Open Galleries, has marked the vibrant start of the new art season in the Rhineland. From September 5 to 7, around 50 galleries in Düsseldorf and Cologne will open their doors for a weekend full of vernissages, talks, and discoveries—free of charge and welcoming to all art lovers. This year, the event's theme is networking: galleries, off-spaces, and museums invite visitors to engage in an intensive dialogue that breaks down the boundaries between the two cities. Visitors can commute by shuttle bus or bicycle, while the galleries offer extended opening hours – often late into the night.

As usual, the spectrum of exhibitions encompasses established positions as well as fresh impulses and surprises. Galerie Falko Alexander, which positions itself in Cologne as a bridge between analog and digital art, is showing Dominik Halmer's solo show “Deep Surface.” What seems paradoxical in the title describes the tension between depth and surface, substance and simulation, in which Dominik Halmer's work is positioned. Starting from the analytically skeptical context of Albert Oehlen, with whom he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Halmer has developed a unique painterly position. The diversity and complexity of his shaped canvas works is described as a kind of “baroque constructivism.” With installations, he extends the concept of the image to physical space, making the viewer an active participant in a game of meaning, symbols, and metaphors.

Just a few meters away, in the Buchholz Gallery, an equally fascinating and astonishing exhibition awaits visitors. Under the title “Food chain incl. prehistoric animals,” Henrik Olesen presents his latest crocodile sculptures. Olesen regards crocodiles, which have existed for around 200 million years and have hardly changed in the course of evolution, as a window into a world and time in which humans and the changes they have brought about did not yet exist. His sculptures, which refer to crocodiles from different moments in the evolutionary history of the species, are made of various materials, some of plaster, others of papier-mâché or concrete, and have been treated with different surface finishes. They appear both naturalistic and artificial at the same time and bear traces of the process of their physical creation, a state in which they still find themselves, so to speak.

Since 1986, the Gisela Capitain Gallery in Cologne has been synonymous with advanced contemporary art. Kristi Cavataro's second solo show opens at DC Open. The works of the young artist, who lives in New York, lend painting on glass an impressive new sculptural dimension. Her suggestively architectural, sometimes even machine-like constructions made of stained glass are usually one meter high. They are handmade in a complex process in which individual glass tiles are cut, wrapped, and soldered into complex cylindrical compositions. The drawings (only a small portion of which are ever fully realized) are a way for Cavataro to quickly develop ideas and explore different possibilities and variations in order to decide “what is worth pursuing and what is physically possible.”

Let's stay in Cologne for a moment: The Khoshbakht Gallery presents “Call Boys, Pimps & Dealers” by Ryan Huggins, an exhibition that delves into the underworld of urban subcultures. Huggins, born in Trinidad and now living in Düsseldorf, is a figurative painter whose images represent a fusion of ideas surrounding alternative youth subcultures within queer communities. His paintings, often garish and provocative, explore the vocabulary of queer references and terminologies relating to the body, social identity, and gender as an evolving language.

We continue to Düsseldorf, where Galerie 3AP has established itself as an innovative space for contemporary art, presenting the group exhibition “Suspension of Disbelief II” at DC Open. Founded in 2022 by Aileen Treusch, the gallery focuses on emerging artists who explore the boundaries between reality and fiction. The title refers to the media theory term “suspension of disbelief,” which describes the deliberate suspension of disbelief in order to immerse oneself in a narrative. The artists address perception, illusion, and emotional projection. The show, curated by Treusch herself, brings together works by Julian Heuser, Nadine Karl, Toni Meyer, Julie Mia, and Lara Werth—a dynamic mix of painting, sculpture, and installations.

A renowned player in the art trade with a focus on modern and contemporary art is the Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art gallery in Düsseldorf, which is offering two parallel shows at DC Open. “Facets” presents the artist and trained goldsmith Dorothea Förster, born in 1954, who works at the interface between applied and fine art. The jewelry and wall objects that are the focus of the exhibition follow a clear formal language derived from the basic shapes of squares and circles. In her creative process, Förster uses paper cutouts, negative and positive forms, which she constantly recombines and seems to almost declinate. Her objects (made of gold and silver for the jewelry and laser-cut, powder-coated aluminum for the wall objects) retain the irregularities and blurriness of the paper cutouts. Geometric rigor gives way to a playful, sketch-like lightness that underscores the associative and creatively intoxicating nature of her working method. In addition, over 30 gouaches, watercolors, and colored chalk drawings, as well as works in various graphic techniques from 1963 to 2007, by Gotthard Graubner, a pioneer of color space painting, will be on display. They testify to Graubner's passion for color and paper, as well as his enthusiasm for experimentation.

DC Open 2025 is not only a showcase for art, but also an opportunity for lively exchange. In times of digital overload, it reminds us of the power of real-life experiences—seeing art in person, talking to artists, and discovering new perspectives.

Author: Olaf Schlippe