If a gallery established in the Swiss city of Lucerne decides to open a second venue, the obvious move would be to look first to the nearest cities, or to one of Europe's great art capitals. Barcelona, then, would hardly be the most obvious choice for a new chapter. But KALI Gallery has chosen to defy that logic, crossing the Alps to stake its claim on the Catalan capital.
On September 12, the Swiss-born gallery will open its new headquarters in Barcelona at Espai Capellans (Capellans, 13), in the heart of the city. The space, long linked to the Barcelona art scene, now begins a new chapter as the gallery’s second permanent location and its first outside Switzerland.
The exhibition Smoke, Clouds and Elevation will serve as the gallery’s introduction to Barcelona: a solo exhibition by artist Nils Nova, one of KALI Gallery’s regular artists, which will bring together a new series of paintings as well as an installation created specifically for Espai Capellans, designed to integrate into the architecture of the space and its historic stone walls.
This all raises the obvious question: why Barcelona? What did the gallery owners in Lucerne see in Barcelona’s art scene that convinced them this was the right market to expand into? "Barcelona had been on my mind for quite some time," says Nicolai Kalinowsky, founder and director of KALI Gallery. Beyond the city’s history and architecture, he is especially drawn to "its vibrant contemporary art scene," as well as the combination of its distinct Catalan cultural identity, international outlook, and location by the sea, which, in his words, creates "a very inspiring cultural environment."
For Kalinowsky, the Catalan capital also offers the chance to meet new artists, forge new collaborations, and broaden the horizons of a gallery that has, until now, built its entire trajectory from Lucerne, closely tied to its local scene. Indeed, it marks another transformation for a space that has continued evolving since its founding almost eight years ago.
What remains of the night, an exhibition currently on display at KALI Gallery in Lucerne.Crossing borders and expanding horizons
In 2018, when he was just 26, Kalinowsky launched a small space in Lucerne conceived as an informal platform for experimentation in contemporary art — something more open and flexible than a conventional gallery. It was in 2023 that Kalinowsky began working full-time on KALI, and the space was formally established as a gallery, with a more defined structure, a stable program and a growing presence on the international scene, with appearances at international fairs including Art Rotterdam, ARCOmadrid and miart in Milan.
Beyond its international dimension, KALI Gallery has been building a program marked by a diversity of artistic languages and voices, with a focus on artists linked to the Swiss scene — both emerging and established —while increasingly opening its doors to artists and practices from further afield, from Italy to El Salvador. The gallery currently represents eight artists: Malte Bartsch, Michele Gabriele, Judith Grassl, Sebastian Haas, Krištof Kintera, Nils Nova — the artist behind the Barcelona exhibition — Jason Rohr and Lulu Cora Süss. Their practices range from painting, sculpture and drawing to video, sound and installation.
Rather than following a fixed curatorial line, KALI focuses on artists who have developed their own visual language, experiment with different materials and media and come from diverse cultural backgrounds. "I am especially interested in the exchange between these different positions and cultural contexts. It is one of the things that I find especially interesting about having a space in Barcelona,” explains Kalinowsky.
In the Catalan capital, however, Kalinowsky has no interest in simply replicating what KALI already does in Lucerne. The new headquarters, indeed, should serve to expand the gallery’s program in both directions: bringing new influences and artistic positions from Switzerland and other contexts KALI already works with to Barcelona, and, at the same time, opening up to artists and collaborators from Barcelona and the rest of Spain, creating new dialogues. “The idea is not simply to open a new gallery, but to create a space where these different perspectives can meet and influence each other,” explains Kalinowsky.
A point of connection
Beyond the local scene, among the connections that interest him most is the one between Europe and Latin America, for which Barcelona is particularly well positioned, both geographically and through its cultural proximity to the Americas. Kalinowsky is wary, however, of turning this relationship into a rigid thematic thread running through every exhibition, preferring instead to explore, gradually, the possibilities this axis opens up through the artists and collaborations that emerge along the way.
That connection is already present in KALI Gallery's debut exhibition in Barcelona. To inaugurate its new headquarters at Espai Capellans, Kalinowsky has chosen a monographic exhibition by Nils Nova, born in 1968 in El Salvador and resident in Lucerne since he was twelve. His career has unfolded across both geographies, and his own biography embodies the crossing between Latin America and Europe that the gallery hopes to explore from Barcelona. The Catalan capital is not unfamiliar territory for the artist, however, having previously exhibited at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies.
But Smoke, Clouds and Elevation goes a step further: in addition to bringing together a new series of paintings, Nova has also designed an installation that engages directly with the architecture of Espai Capellans and its historic stone walls, turning the building from a mere backdrop into part of the exhibition experience.
In fact, although Kalinowsky had Barcelona on his radar for some time, it wasn’t until he found Espai Capellans that he decided to take the plunge and open a space in the city. He wasn’t looking for a perfectly neutral white cube, an increasingly common model in contemporary gallery spaces, but rather a space with character, capable of challenging artists as well, encouraging them to rethink the relationship between their works and the space that exhibits them. Espai Capellans, which already functioned as a regular exhibition space, offers precisely this: a historic space, with its stone walls still visible, in which the architecture does not disappear behind the works, but rather forms part of the exhibition experience.
The show chosen to inaugurate the space on September 12 seems anything but incidental; it reads rather as a statement of intent — by one of KALI Gallery’s regular artists, but also by a gallery keen for its arrival in Barcelona to be more than simply a change of address.
KALI Gallery and a moving scene
Espai Capellans is also located a few minutes from Trafalgar, an area that in recent years has established itself as one of the city’s key hubs for contemporary galleries. More than a dozen spaces are now clustered around the vicinity, partially shifting the center of gravity of the city’s gallery scene away from other areas that have traditionally concentrated much of the sector’s activity, such as Consell de Cent. KALI Gallery adds another space to this evolving landscape. It is a scene that has continued to grow and diversify in recent years, with new voices, projects and players.
And it comes during one of the busiest moments in Barcelona’s art calendar. Just five days after the gallery’s inauguration, from September 17 to 20, Barcelona and L’Hospitalet will host the twelfth Barcelona Gallery Weekend, bringing together 25 galleries and nearly fifty national and international artists. A fitting moment, then, for KALI Gallery to begin its next chapter in Barcelona, as the city's art scene continues to welcome new arrivals.
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