Why This London Gallery Is Opening a New Outpost in Ibiza
Exterior view of the bar at Mira at Gathering Ibiza designed by Tai Shani, 2024. Courtesy of Gathering.
Situated on the more serene northern side of Ibiza, the fluorescent pink bar stools and breast-shaped chandeliers on the patio of Gathering’s new space, designed by British artist Tai Shani, is part of its on-site restaurant, named Mira after founder Alex Flick’s daughter, and is an apt calling card for the London-born gallery’s experimental approach to programming.
Just two years after Gathering opened in London in 2022, Flick made the choice to expand to Ibiza after seeing the island’s potential as a contemporary art hotspot, something that will be given extra momentum with the opening of the CAN Art Fair this week. The Ibiza gallery opened last month with the group show “Substance,” which features kristian kragelund’s geometric abstract works made from fiberglass and resin, the frenetic paintings of Rannva Kunoy, and Jennifer Tee’s tulip-based collages and accompanying piezographic prints. The show is a testament to Flick’s affinity for experimental artists, a consistent theme of his gallery’s identity.
Installation view of “Substance” at Gathering Ibiza, 2024. Courtesy of Gathering.
“I like radical practices. That’s what I’ve boiled it down to,” Flick added. Gathering was born from Flick’s desire to bring more conceptual or experimental art to the forefront. From 2015 to 2019, the gallerist operated a small project space in East London called UNIT9. Following a series of COVID lockdowns in the city, Flick was inspired to create a space where people could come together and view radical art.
“Gathering came from that solitary existence that we had at that time,” said Flick. “It was the thing we missed the most was meeting with people, so [the] ‘Gathering’ concept was born during COVID.”
Portrait of Alex Flick. Courtesy of Gathering.
In 2022, Gathering debuted in the heart of Soho in Central London, making an immediate splash with its first show of works by Shani, who won the Turner Prize in 2019 together with the three other nominees. Her show “Your Arms Outstretched Above Your Head, Coding With The Angels” featured a hallucinatory CGI film, mausoleum-like sculptures, and watercolor paintings, framing the gallery’s approach to platforming the cutting-edge of emerging art.
Flick credits the gallery’s initial success to the buzzy artists who took a chance to work with him, from Shani to American Indigenous artist Wendy Red Star, whose solo show “In the Shadow of Paper Mountains” is on view in the London gallery until September 1st. In 2023, Gathering dedicated part of its gallery to a project space, Glasshouse, designed to foster early career talent alongside its main exhibition schedule. This summer, the project space is showing Christian Franzen’s debut U.K. exhibition titled “Partial Truth.” For Flick, all aspects of his gallery’s growing program can be attributed to an overall approach of open-mindedness.
“The work has to speak to me on an emotional and cerebral level,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, which part of the world, or what gender, those are secondary considerations. The consideration is how pertinent is the practice to expressing the contemporary world, and that in a way that is out of the norm.”
Today, the roster at Gathering includes an impressive cadre of buzzworthy artists such as Portuguese Canadian artist Emmanuel de Carvalho, Georgian painter Tamara K.E., Peruvian artist Wynnie Mynerva, Paris-based performance and multimedia artist Ndayé Kouagou, and Shani.
Exterior view of Gathering London. Courtesy of Gathering.
Now, as the island prepares for CAN Ibiza on June 26th, Gathering is gearing up for an intergenerational two-person exhibition with works from conceptual artists 49-year-old Stefan Brüggemann and 82-year-old Bruce Nauman, “Painting Not Painting.” The exhibition encompasses the two artist’s wide-ranging practices, featuring a selection of paintings, sculptures, and prints inside the two floors of the gallery.
The gallery’s expansion also comes at a time when Ibiza’s art scene itself is poised to flourish, thanks in part to the CAN Art Fair. “I was surprised, if I’m honest, that no one had done it before,” Flick said of the fair. During the second lockdown in the U.K., Flick and his teenage daughter spent six weeks in Ibiza. And though the island had everything you could ask for—restaurants, beaches, resorts, nightclubs—he felt an international art presence was missing.
Exterior view of Mira at Gathering Ibiza, 2024. Courtesy of Gathering.
“I couldn’t understand why—because in Menorca with Hauser and in Switzerland in these ski resorts—these very small communities—or even slightly bigger in Palm Springs—have that offering, and they didn’t have it here [in Ibiza], and it felt that’s also been a very strong reaction from people, they’ve [said], ‘Hey, we really needed this. This has really been missing,’” Flick said. “It actually was born at a similar time to Gathering London, but we needed to find the right moment.”
In stepping into Ibiza, Gathering mirrors its knack for spotting and nurturing emerging talent in the art world. This expansion is emblematic of the young gallery’s broader approach to identifying emerging artists whose eclectic practices meet the needs of its growing audience. “I like for an audience to have an experience, an immersive experience—those are the practices that I think are most in line with our society at large,” said Flick.
