Dépendance, the Brussels gallery known for its tightly edited program and low-key independence, is closing after 23 years.
Founded in 2003 by former artist Michael Callies and banker-turned-collector Stephan Jaax, the gallery said in a mailing list letter that it feels “time to say good-bye.” The note quoted Charles Baudelaire: “Une suite de petites volontés fait un gros résultat.”
From the start, Dépendance moved against the grain of the expansionist gallery model that defined much of the contemporary art market in the 2000s and 2010s. Rather than opening multiple outposts or chasing a heavy fair schedule, it kept a single space in one city and built a roster of a little more than 30 artists. Among them were Josef Strau, Ed Atkins, Allison Katz, Oscar Tuazon, and Jana Euler.
The gallery’s early identity was closely linked to the Städelschule in Frankfurt, where Callies had been a guest student in the early 1990s under Martin Kippenberger. Michael Krebber, Kippenberger’s assistant and one of the more influential and divisive painters of his generation, showed early at Dépendance, alongside Städelschule figures such as Haegue Yang and Thomas Bayrle. That lineage gave the gallery a distinctly conceptual edge, one that favored rigor over market polish.
Callies has said Brussels offered unusual room for that kind of experiment. In a 2020 interview, he described the city as “an island” for a gallery trying to launch artists who already had representation in Berlin or London. He and Jaax also kept costs low enough, he said, that they believed they could stay open for two years without selling anything. The plan was improvised, even precarious, but it proved durable.
Dépendance also participated in art fairs, though modestly by contemporary standards, usually appearing at five or six each year. In 2024, it added a project space called View, whose final exhibition, by ReschWilleit, will close on June 27. The main space’s last show, by Alexandra Metcalf, will close the same day.
The gallery said it will remain reachable until the end of August 2026 for inquiries and practical matters. Its closure marks the end of a rare model in the gallery world: small, selective, and willing to let artists lead the conversation.
