New actors on the art gallery scene are unwavering in their interrogation of structures. There’s the joint aim to democratise the scene, a reaction and lasting call to action to dismantle the White Cube. While many established institutions face cutbacks and uncertainty, the resurgence of small-scale galleries comes with a prosperous positivity that continues to infiltrate an aged framework. Planted in one of Berlin’s notable gallery clusters, newly opened Galerie OM operates right in this discourse. 

Starting on a structural level, founders Moana Thies and Oscar Gröne have engineered a no-inventory approach without conventional artist representation. Together with creative director Julian Zacharias Eide, they assemble dealers and stakeholders, sourcing works per exhibition with no fixed trajectory or specified themes. 

Partie Une, the gallery’s first exhibition, is a double-layered title: besides housing the apparent idea of an inaugural chapter, it also connects to the new era in the city’s art scene. It’s an assembly, a home, of collectible design through an unpolished lens. The site itself is designed to be the “first object you encounter” – a carpet stretching across the space sets a soft undertone to points of shadow and accent lighting. Design infiltrates the entire exhibition, fleshed out through objects spanning roughly a century of design history. Grouped works are installed on both floors and walls, conflated through a scattered range of reference points: it’s a cacophony of an eclectic ‘70s collector’s apartment and the trademark Berlin zeitgeist.

Cross-territorial pieces – some textile works, other fine art – spark a discourse between old and new: a 1940s lounge chair next to a hyper-modern piece from last year. Though featuring designers such as Pierre Chareau and Martin Margiela, hierarchies are sloped in favour of new narratives, of encountering objects and pondering the possibilities of design, stripped of fixed labels. Accompanying audio and scents add colour to this warmer, more open-ended display.

Partie Une and the launch of Galerie OM mark a continuum within a disobedient, intersectionally transforming art scene in Berlin and other key art capitals. The exhibition – or at least the energy in the air – uses the relics of traditional gallery culture as a springboard towards a more direct proposition. Instead of maintaining the firm grip of classic art packaging, viewers are invited into a sensory experience packed with impressions. The space isn’t the soul or identity, but a wellspring for a wider programme that is still in the making.