For the 27-year-old gallerist Paul Henkel, collecting art runs in his blood. His mother is the German art dealer Katrin Bellinger, an old-masters specialist. Throughout her career, she has amassed work by the French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the Rococo printmaker Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and pastels by the whimsical Jean-Jacques Karpff.
Last year, Henkel opened Palo Gallery, in Manhattan, when he was only 26. Despite his age, there isn’t anything amateur about the sleek, 3,400-square-foot space on Bond Street, equal parts White Cube and traditional salon. German architect Annabelle Selldorf—who collaborated with Frank Gehry on the Luma Foundation, in Arles—runs her furniture line, Vica, out of the gallery.
Growing up in London, Henkel dreamed of becoming a real-estate developer. “I mean, I bought a couple [art] pieces, but I never thought of that as a career,” he explains. When he was 12, his grandmother gave him about $4,000 to put in a savings account. A few years later, at Frieze London, Henkel spotted a watercolor collage by Gert and Uwe Tobias. “I completely fell in love with it,” he says. Henkel used his grandmother’s present to buy the small work and hung it above his bed, where it still is today. “Why would you have money sitting in a savings account when it could be something beautiful on your wall?”
A watercolor diptych by Chris Ofili, en plein air paintings by Will Bruno, and, eventually, work by well-known artists, such as Anish Kapoor, Luc Tuymans, and Frank Stella, followed.
In 2015, Henkel spent a year abroad in Florence, then moved to New York to study architectural history and urban design at New York University. “I took one class in the Art History Department, and it occurred to me—this is what I’m passionate about,” he says. During his junior year, he applied for an internship at Hauser & Wirth, which he ultimately found stifling. “I’m way too impatient to work for 15 years in a gallery without having creative output.”
In 2018, he started organizing pop-up exhibitions around Manhattan with Louis Vaccara, an aspiring dealer he met in Florence. They called the venture Palo, a combination of their names. Crowds gathered outside their first show, on the Bowery, which featured work by Dean Dempsey, a young multi-media artist from Arizona. A few months later, the duo organized a show with the British painter Alexander James above the Overthrow Boxing Club, on Bleecker Street, in NoHo.
“After the pandemic, Louis went to work for Gagosian, but I kept the name Palo because it was very catchy,” explains Henkel. In 2020 and 2021, while pursuing a master’s in art history at N.Y.U., Henkel curated more shows. As they sold out, he looked for a more permanent location.
“In 2021, we did a pop-up on Bond Street. It was supposed to be a month but went so well we extended for another four,” says Henkel. He called the landlord, who offered him a space a few doors down. When Selldorf, an old family friend, heard about the opening, she came over and proposed collaborating in the space.
Since the gallery’s inaugural show, in September 2022, Henkel has organized many exhibitions. On November 3, he unveiled the latest, “Source,” which features work by the cutting-edge Indian artist Sagarika Sundaram, who creates striking large-scale textile sculptures with natural dyes.
“When I went to her studio, it was like a religious experience,” Henkel says. “When I come across people like her, I feel so lucky to be doing this job.”
“Source” is on view at Palo Gallery, in New York City, through February 4
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Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL