The Most Important Young Galleries in the World

In this decade of recovery from a recession, the global art market has found a way to adapt and is now a juggernaut with $67.4 billion in annual sales. While the bulk of that figure changes hands at auction houses, mega-galleries, and through private deals, integral to the market’s future success are new galleries—the ones braving a demanding fair circuit and fickle collector base to strike out on their own.

With input from collectors, dealers, and fair directors, I rounded up these emerging galleries from three distinct regions: The Americas; Europe and Africa; and Asia and the Middle East. There is some range here—some are less than a year old or have just started to show at small satellite fairs; others have been around for a decade and have shown at one of the three Art Basel fairs—but all of these outfits share similar qualities. They have been started by former directors at larger shops; a trader at Goldman Sachs; critics who pivoted from reviewing shows to making them; and artists who converted studios to white cubes. These galleries bottle the energy of their distinct scenes and have founders ambitious enough to take their programs onto the global circuit.

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Sweetwater

Founded in 2018 in Berlin by Lucas Casso.

Data Point: Accepted to Liste less than five months after opening its first show.

Bankers have become art dealers before, but Lucas Casso may be the first dealer to leave Goldman Sachs in his twenties and open a contemporary art gallery in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood. His career change was far from rash, and his track record already proves it. In February, during Frieze Los Angeles, he rented a space steps away from LACMA and showed stellar works by the artists Friedemann Heckel and Luzie Meyer. He’s now showing at Liste with new work by Kayode Ojo, the first artist who inaugurated his gallery last year.

What is the gallery’s overall mission?

I founded Sweetwater not with some grand overall mission, but because I wanted to show challenging conceptual work.

What are the biggest challenges to running an art gallery in your city or region?

It’s easy to find articles and interviews explaining that Berlin is no longer a great place for galleries because of rising costs, relative lack of local collectors, etc., but I disagree, or I wouldn’t have come here! The challenges that galleries in Berlin face are not so different from those in other major cities; regardless of where a gallery is located, creating a financially sustainable model and developing an extensive international network are imperative.

How do you see your gallery changing over the next five years?

I expect Sweetwater to grow and develop alongside and in collaboration with its artists. Developing a consistent and defined program in this way is a process that happens not just in a couple shows, but in a couple years. It is also important to export these ideas beyond the confines of the gallery in Berlin through off-site presentations in art fairs, gallery swaps, and other collaborative projects.