Une suite de petites volontés fait un gros résultat (Ch. Baudelaire)
Galleries come and go. Some are short-lived but leave a clear trace, others endure for decades without changing much.
dépendance has been there for twenty-three years and now we feel it’s time to say good-bye.
Many wonderful people have joined us on our journey and we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of you for the time we’ve spent together. It has been exciting and very fulfilling. And all this wouldn’t have been possible without Ayelet Yanai, Rachelle Dufour, Louis-Philippe Van Eeckhoutte and the rest of the team.
dépendance - History
Founded in Brussels in 2003, dépendance has - over more than two decades - developed into a program-driven gallery with a focus on artist-led practice and long-term collaboration. Established by Michael Callies and Stephan Jaax, the gallery initially emerged from an artistic network connected to the Städelschule in Frankfurt, where a number of early collaborators and exhibiting artists studied or taught, including artists Thomas Bayrle, Sergej Jensen, Michael Krebber, Henrik Olesen, Haegue Yang and Thilo Heinzmann. This origin informed the gallery’s emphasis on intergenerational exchange and sustained artistic dialogue.*
From its inception, dépendance has presented artists who later became widely recognized and whose works found their way into significant public and private collections across Europe and beyond.
Artists such as Michaela Eichwald, Jana Euler, Lucie Stahl, Peter Wächtler, Merlin Carpenter, Richard Aldrich and others either first exhibited with the gallery or entered into long-term relationships during its formative years. Over time, the gallery developed a broader international roster including artists such as Ed Atkins, Linder, Gillian Carnegie, Allison Katz, Camilla Wills and Oscar Tuazon. The gallery has also consistently supported artists active in Brussels, including Olivier Foulon, Simon Thompson, Alfred d’Ursel and Monika Stricker, reflecting its embeddedness within the city’s contemporary artistic landscape. The program has likewise maintained long-standing dialogues with artists such as Will Benedict, Christian Flamm, Karl Holmqvist, Nora Schultz and Josef Strau, whose practices embrace performance, language, publishing, and the social conditions of exhibition-making in varying ways. This trajectory later expanded further with artists such as Graham Little, Katja Seib, and Danai Anesiadou, reflecting shifting concerns across painting, installation, film, and sculpture. Across these developments, the program has remained anchored in practices that probe the boundaries between image-making, language, and institutional critique.
Artists associated with the gallery have been shown extensively in major international contexts, including the Venice Biennale, Skulptur Projekte Münster, Documenta Kassel, and at institutions including MoMA, New York; Tate Britain, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; WIELS, Brussels; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, among others.
Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, dépendance consolidated its position within the international gallery landscape through regular participation in leading art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze London, Frieze New York, Art Brussels, ARCO Madrid, miart and Liste.
The gallery also introduced VIEW, a dedicated project space, conceived as an extension of its program. VIEW introduced a more flexible exhibition format, with presentations by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven and Willem Oorebeek, as well as collaborative projects with Dial Records and Texte Zur Kunst, complementing the gallery’s exhibition rhythm and allowing for more experimental presentations.
Practical
The gallery will remain reachable until the end of August 2026 for inquiries and the follow-up of practical matters, ensuring a continued point of contact for any outstanding organizational or administrative needs during this transitional period.
The website will remain active as an archive following the closure, preserving access to past exhibitions and related materials. A complete exhibition history will also continue to be available on Contemporary Art Library.
*For further insight into dépendance there is an interview with Michael Callies here.