India in Germany

BERLIN—The allure of Berlin’s growing gallery scene grows ever stronger. First came the transfers from Cologne and Munich, then the subsidiary showrooms from New York and London. Now Asia is marching in.

The latest arrival is BodhiArt, a up-and-coming upmarket dealer in contemporary Indian art, which has opened branches in Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore and New York, successively, over the past three years.

“Fully 80 percent of our sales were going to European collectors. Even New York was selling predominantly to Europeans,” says Shaheen Merali, BodhiArt’s Berlin-based artistic director. “So it became obvious—necessary, I’d say—to establish a presence in Europe.” BodhiBerlin has moved into a vaulting 5,400-square-foot former railroad freight depot in the Mitte district, behind the Hamburger Bahnhof museum. The inaugural show featured mobiles, sculptures and other works, priced from €8,000 to €450,000 ($12,600 to $709,000), by seven Indian artists. The second, a collaboration with Berlin’s Galerie Volker Diehl that runs through August 2, comprises 22 installations by the 32-year-old Shilpa Gupta, India’s most prominent new-media practitioner.

Contemporary Indian art is “surely not yet on a par with that of China,” says Merali, “but no big auction house or big gallery can any longer ignore it.”

"India in Germany" originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July 2008 Table of Contents.