Galerie Nagel Draxler (formerly Galerie Christian Nagel) was founded in Cologne in 1990 and operates in Cologne, Berlin and Munich. 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 who sometimes have their first gallery presentation with us, we meet the challenges of tomorrow. We see it as a 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.
Kiron Khosla, Gang Zhao and Kader Attia are artists of bilateral heritage who reflect on Western positions from a transcultural perspective.
With Mirjam Thomann, Lone Haugaard Madsen, Keren Cytter, Christian Kosmas Mayer, Dominik Sittig and Julia Haller we gained important younger positions for our program.
In 2010 and 2011 we ran a temporary dependance in Antwerp, a city that strongly influenced the history of avantgarde art during the 1960s and 1970s. At this time we began to represent Belgian artists Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Guillaume Bijl.
Anna Fasshauer, Egan Frantz, JPW3, Sayre Gomez, Luke Willis Thompson, Christine Wang, Gunter Reski and Pedro Wirz joined us more recently.
Since 2019 we represent Chinese artist Ji Dachun and Saudiarabian artist Abdulnasser Gharem, as well as the estate of the German steel sculptor Alf Lechner.
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). There we showed for example Peter Wächtler, Adam Harrison, Emmanuelle Quertain, Inka Meissner and Jan Kiefer. Mark von Schlegell and Oona-Léa von Maydell have curated shows, with graduates from the Frankfurt Städelschule among others.
In 2016 we opened Nagel Draxler Kabinett in Berlin with an exhibition of works by Günther Förg, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Martin Kippenberger and Heimo Zobernig.
In 2018 we opened a new gallery space in Cologne (Elisenstrasse 4-6) with an exhibition of new works by New York artist Egan Frantz.
From autumn 2019 on, we also run a space in Munich’s Maxvorstadt (Türkenstrasse 43).
