Volker Diehl

Volker Diehl (born 28 May 1957 in Neheim-Hüsten) is a German gallery owner. He mainly exhibits contemporary art in the gallery "DIEHL" (Berlin).

Biography and career After graduating from high school in Warstein in 1977, Volker Diehl first studied at the Kunstakademie Münster under Hans-Jürgen Breuste, and from 1978 art history at the Free University of Berlin. In West Berlin, he supported various artists as part of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (including Markus Raetz, André Thomkins, Wolf Vostell, Dieter Hacker) and got to know René Block in this context. At the exhibition "Für Augen und Ohren" curated by Block, which was first shown at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, and then at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, he was also responsible for the support of artists and thus got to know Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Joe Jones, and many other artists. A little later he became assistant to Shigeko Kubota and ran her studio. From 1981 to 1983 he was assistant to Christos M. Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal. In this context, he supported the artists and worked as personal assistant in the exhibition Zeitgeist (1982), which was "arguably one of the most historically significant global painting surveys of the 20th century". Together with Roland Hagenberg, he subsequently published the two books Maler in Berlin (1982) and the sequel ... Und (1983) in their own publishing house "HAPPY-HAPPY", which contained numerous interviews and portraits of artists and collectors, among them Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz and Erich Marx as well as representatives of the art groups Neue Wilde and Arte Cifra. With Roland Hagenberg he traveled New York City, where they conducted interviews with Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Robert Morris, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, Mary Boone, Tony Shafrazi, and many more. The tapes used turned out later to be defective, so the interviews were never published.

Activities as gallery owner In 1983 he began to curate exhibitions at the "Galerie Folker Skulima" in Berlin as a junior partner and showed young, contemporary artists including Jaume Plensa, Rosemarie Trockel, Leiko Ikemura, Sergey Volkov, Ray Smith and Martin Assig. In September 1990 he took over the rooms at Niebuhrstr. 2 with the founding of "Galerie Volker Diehl". In 2000 he moved to new rooms at Zimmerstr. in Berlin-Mitte, in 2007 to Lindenstraße in the Kreuzberg district. In autumn 2011 the gallery moved back to the former space at Niebuhrstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg. In September 2013, a project space was added under the name "Diehl Cube" in Emser Straße in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, in which exhibitions were shown until 2018.

In addition, Diehl was the first western gallery owner to open its own exhibition space in Moscow under the name "Diehl + Gallery One" in April 2008. In the former premises of the state Soviet art trade at Smolenskaja No. 5/13, Diehl exhibited the works of the American artist Jenny Holzer under the title Like truth as the first project from April 17 to June 15, 2008. After other exhibitions by Wim Delvoye, Zhang Huan, Jaume Plensa and Olga Chernysheva, the Moscow branch closed again at the end of 2009.

With Margarita Pushkina and Vlad Ovcharenko, he established the Russian art fair "Cosmoscow" in 2010 with an "all-inclusive concept". In 2016, together with Elena Sereda and Natalia Chagoubatova, he also founded the London pop-up company "Art Circle" (curation by Bettina Ruhrberg, among others).

Exhibitions (selection) 1983–1990 in Galerie Folker Skulima Georg Baselitz, 1983 Karl Horst Hödicke, 1983 Helmut Middendorf, 1984 Emil Schumacher, 1984 Christian Hasucha, 1984 Klaus Karl Mehrkens, 1985 Erwin Bohatsch, 1985 Gianni Dessi, 1985 Leiko Ikemura, 1985 Pizzi Cannella, 1985 Rosemarie Trockel, 1985/1986 Erwin Bohatsch, 1986 William Turnbull, 1987 Gotthard Graubner, 1988 Christian Ludwig Attersee, Errötende Tiere, 1989 Martin Assig, 1990 Gerhard Merz, 1990 Gerhard Richter, Grafik und Multiples 1966–1989, 1990

Galerie Volker Diehl in Berlin Markus Lüpertz, 1990 Martin Assig, 1990 Donald Judd, 1991 David Deutsch, 1991 Claudia Hart, 1992 Walter Dahn, A. R. Penck, Rosemarie Trockel, Collectiv No. 1, 1992/1993 Angela Dwyer, Neue Bilder, 1995 Christoph M. Gais, 1995 Leiko Ikemura, 1995 Group show: Magnus von Plessen, Fergus Bremner, 1996 Martin Assig, 1997 Jaume Plensa, Projekte auf Papier, 1997 Jaume Plensa, Wie ein Hauch, 1997 Magnus von Plessen, S.A.L.I.G.I.A., 1997 John Noel Smith, 1998 Matthias Müller, Film und Photographie, 2001 Alice Stepanek, Steven Maslin, Bodenlos, 2002 Jaume Plensa, Crown Fountain, 2002 Birgit Dieker, Kardio, 2002/2003 Zhang Huan, Photographie und Video, 2003 Frauke Eigen, Illusion Allusion, 2004/2005 The Blue Noses Group, (Slava Mizin und Sasha Shaburov from Novosibirsk) 2018/2019

Diehl + Gallery One in Moscow Jenny Holzer, Like truth, 2008 Wim Delvoye, New Works, 2008 Group show: Laughterlife – New Art from Russia and Central Asia, 2008 Zhang Huan, Paintings and Sculptures, 2008/2009 Jaume Plensa, Silent Music, 2009 David Ter-Oganyan, Aleksandra Galkina, Scale, 2009 Group show: Glasnost. Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s, 2010 in cooperation with Baibakov Art Projects: Olga Chernysheva, Participation in Modernikon – Contemporary Art from Russia, 2011

Diehl Cube Constantin Flondor, Über einige Flächen mit gemeinsamen Ebenen, 2013 Gonn Mosny, Above the Line – Atmen und Malen, 2013/2014 Homage to Lucio Amelio, The Early Hacker 1960–70, 2014 Carla Guagliardi, Fuga, 2014 Mark Lammert, Floaters, 2015 James Lee Byars, The Secret Archive. Dieter Hacker Collection. Curated by Mark Gisbourne, 2014 Nanda Vigo, Zero in the Mirror, 2015 Ivan Gorshokov, The Way of King’s Pie, 2015 Anastasia Khoroshilova, Die Übrigen 2015 Alexander Rodchenko, Jump, 2017 Hartmut Böhm, Objects in Dialogue, 2017

Publications (selection)

Christos M. Joachimides (Ed.): Zeitgeist. Edited by Ursula Prinz u. Volker Diehl. Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1982 (in German). Volker Diehl, Roland Hagenberg (Eds.): Maler in Berlin. Berlin: HAPPY-HAPPY, (in German). Volker Diehl, Roland Hagenberg (Eds.): ... Und. Berlin: HAPPY-HAPPY, (in German). Volker Diehl (Ed.): Martin Assig. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 1990 (in German). Andy Warhol: Flowers. New York, Berlin: Stellan Holm Gallery, Galerie Volker Diehl, 1994. Galerie Großinsky & Brümmer, Galerie Volker Diehl (Eds.): Martin Assig. Karlsruhe and Berlin: Galerie Großinsky & Brümmer and Galerie Volker Diehl, 1997 (in German. Jaume Plensa: Wie ein Hauch. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 1998 (in German). Susan Hiller: The curiosities of Sigmund Freud. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2006. Zhang Huan: Drawings – On the Occasion of the Exhibition Zhang Huan – Drawings, at Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, March 10 to April 10, 2007. München: Schirmer/Mosel, 2007. Martin Borowski: Homestory Visitation. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2007. Ling Jian: The Last Idealism. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2007. Martin Assig: Westwerk Havelhaus. Berlin and München: Galerie Volker Diehl and Schirmer/Mosel, 2008 (in German). Olga Chernysheva, Boris Groys: Caesuras. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2009. Joseph Backstein, Ekaterina Degot, Boris Groys: Glasnost – Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s. Haunch of Venision; London: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2010. Christian Megert: Licht und Bewegung. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2013 (in German). Peter Sedgley: Singing Light. Berlin: Diehl, 2014. Rolf-Gunter Dienst: Primavera. Berlin: Volker Diehl, Allegra Ravizza, 2015. Ralf Hanselle, Volker Diehl, Stefan Heyne: Prime Time – archetypes of abstraction in photography. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2016. Julia Nefedova, Lena Vazhenina: Internet doesn’t allow me to forget you. Berlin: Galerie Volker Diehl, 2016. Simon English: My Big Self Decoy Justin Beiber. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2017. Tiberiy Szilvashi: Rembrandt-Zoom – Melancholie als Alchemie der Malerei. Published by Volker Diehl. Berlin: ciconia ciconia, 2019 (in German).