Founder Pauline Seguin says collectors and London's appetite for experimental work drew her away from Berlin.
Heidi, a contemporary art gallery that opened in Berlin in 2021, has moved to London. Its new space on Maddox Street opens on Thursday 24 September.
The first exhibition is Trout Fishing in America, the gallery’s first solo show for Brook Hsu, a painter based in New York and Wyoming. It runs until 7 November. Hsu took a postcard copy of Courbet’s 1873 painting The Trout, wrote a letter to her partner on it, and built the show from there.
Pauline Seguin, who runs the gallery, said the move came from both problems in Berlin and the draw of London’s scene of younger galleries. She pointed to shrinking culture budgets and a property crisis in the German capital, which she said meant less experimental art was being shown there.
She added that buyers seeing work in person now matters much more, and that few collectors make the trip to Berlin. Seguin, who is French, also looked at Paris but said tastes there were still a little conservative, while “London has an appetite for the experimental and the subcultural”.
Heidi has signed a five-year lease on a small third-floor space reached by stairs. Hauser & Wirth is close by, and so are the big fashion stores of Bond Street. “We wanted to be central and take advantage of the density of collectors London offers,” Seguin said.
The gallery works with seven artists and has a US focus. Among them are Kandis Williams and the filmmaker Jordan Strafer, whose work at the 2026 Whitney Biennial made her name. Heidi also has a place in the Focus section of Frieze London, where it will give a solo presentation to Akeem Smith, a fashion designer turned installation artist.
It opens on Thursday 24 September on Maddox Street.
Trout Fishing in America, a painting show by Brook Hsu, which runs until 7 November.
Pauline Seguin pointed to shrinking culture budgets and a property crisis in Berlin, few collectors travelling there, and London's scene of younger galleries.
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