Your Insider Guide to 10 Must-See Booths at Discovery Art Fair Cologne

With over 100 exhibitors, the 10th 2025 edition of Discovery Art Fair Cologne is a must for both seasoned collectors and curious newcomers. As you wander through the vibrant halls of XPOST, you’ll find a rich mix of painting, sculpture, mixed media, and photography, each booth offering its own perspective, palette, and energy.

But with so much visual stimulation, it can feel a little overwhelming to take it all in. So we’ve done the hard part for you: handpicking 10 standout booths that truly deserve your attention.
Let us be your guide as you make your way through DAF Cologne 2025, these are the stops you won’t want to miss.
The booths we’ve chosen are listed in the order we encountered them, simply as we moved through the fair, not as a ranking or reflection of artistic merit. Each one stood out in its own way, and we think they’re all worth your time.
Ready to explore? Let’s begin.

1. Kalkman Gallery – Booth E1

Just to the right of the entrance, Kalkman Gallery from Maastricht grabs your attention with a bold, well-curated selection of contemporary pop art, clever typography, and works that speak loud and clear. The real draw here is Jase Powell, whose pieces bring both visual punch and conceptual depth. His ongoing series Things People Say [Of Course I Love You] plays with materials and meaning, think faux ostrich leather mimicking goosebumps, rendered in sleek monochromes or jarring color contrasts like white on forest green and red on hot pink. Powell’s work feels at once intimate and confrontational. This booth doesn’t just catch your eye, it starts a conversation you’ll want to keep having.

2. LOFT 11 Gallery – Booth E2

Just beside Kalkman Gallery, LOFT 11 GALLERY brings the lively spirit of its original Barcelona loft into the heart of Cologne. What began as Axel Rockfish’s creative space has grown into a gallery known for showcasing artists who blend sophistication with surprise. The booth features an eclectic mix: iconic names like Helmut Newton, Elliott Erwitt, and Jimmy Nelson hang alongside vibrant new voices like Miquel Piñeiro and Lorena Pradal. Sculptural works by Claire and Marina Salazar add humor and edge. There’s a sense of visual abundance here, but it never feels overcrowded, more like walking into a conversation between eras and styles. If you’re looking for both legacy and fresh perspective, stop here and stay a while.

3. ARTHUS Galerie – Booth C3

A regular at Discovery Art Fair, ARTHUS Galerie returns with a strong group presentation, including names like Thomas Baumgärtel, Petra Rintelen, and Vitali Safronov. But two quieter voices steal the spotlight this year. Helgrit Völpel’s miniature sculptures capture the emotional weight of daily life with striking simplicity. Each tiny figure feels like a personal encounter, tender, witty, and deeply human.

In contrast, Bodo W. Klös offers sharp, sensual drawings that walk the fine line between mischief and meditation. His work is playful, elegant, and never vulgar, thanks to a masterful hand and a sense of humor that feels both timeless and perfectly placed.

Together, these two bring balance and a thoughtful intimacy to the booth’s dynamic mix.

4. gkp Gallery – Booth C5

Visiting gkp Gallery at Discovery Art Fair always feels like reconnecting with something essential. This year’s presentation includes deeply human portraits by Lena Krashevka, alongside works by Oleksii Gnievyshev, Maxim Probst, and Robert Mroczynski. Krashevka’s paintings explore the quiet intensity of inner life, emotions rendered in light, air, and rich acrylic or oil. Her portraits don’t just depict; they radiate mood.

Founded in 2022 by three artists from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, now based in Germany, gkp is a gallery born from collaboration and conviction. Their work is fresh, expressive, and grounded in values of freedom, art, and self-determination. There’s nothing showy here, just sincerity, talent, and a belief in painting’s enduring power.

5. A.I.P. Galerie – Artists in Progress – Booth B6

At a.i.p.galerie – artists in progress, the line between sound and sculpture blurs into something playful and provocative. Founded by sculptor and musician Dolores Flores in 2003, the gallery champions experimental work across mediums, from installation and sound art to abstract painting and interactive objects.

This year’s duo presentation features Flores alongside Marius D. Kettler, a painter and sound artist whose expressive, “loud” abstractions buzz with energy. Flores’ sculptural pieces, crafted from fiberglass, paper, and bold typography, strike a strong contrast, grounded, tactile, and full of quiet tension. Together, their work pulses with a collaborative rhythm. You don’t just view this booth, you step into a space where visuals echo and materials speak.

6. Oliver Pavic – Booth C6

Oliver Pavic’s portraits stare back at you, twisted, unsettling, and impossible to forget. Framed in a classical manner but distorted beyond recognition, these painted faces feel like figures from a dream you can’t quite place—or a nightmare you wish you could forget. The color is jarring, the brushwork raw, and each expression warped just enough to reveal something deeper: guilt, fear, desire, denial.

Pavic draws on art history, dream logic, and his architectural past to create a visual language that’s both familiar and disorienting. Think Bacon meets baroque. His booth feels like a psychological hall of mirrors—deeply personal, darkly humorous, and strangely beautiful. Don’t walk past it. Let it haunt you, just a little.

7. Gerd Paulicke – Booth C15

Gerd Paulicke’s photographic works don’t just hang on the wall, they linger in your thoughts long after you’ve moved on. His images feel like quiet echoes of human experience, layered with time, memory, and a subtle tension that’s hard to name. Paulicke is less interested in documenting the world than in excavating it, fragment by fragment, guiding viewers through a visual search for identity and connection.

His work often circles themes of threshold and transformation, emotional borderlands where past and present blur. Though rooted in photography, these pieces feel sculptural in spirit: solid, sensitive, and deeply reflective. If you’re in the mood for something that engages both eye and mind, this is a booth worth slowing down for.

8. Janine Seelen – Booth C16

Janine Seelen’s paintings catch you off guard, in the best way. A light switch, a button, an intercom—ordinary things, suspended in quiet stillness, become portals into something deeper. Her new series, RESET., isolates these everyday details, stripping away context until what’s left feels both familiar and slightly eerie. Seelen’s use of muted color and generous white space invites introspection. You’re not just looking at a painting, you’re wondering what happens next, or what just happened.
There’s an intimacy to her work that pulls you in gently, then lingers. Don’t miss Booth C16—it’s a quiet place that asks big questions, and might just reset your way of seeing.

9. FeMe – Booth F17

At FeMe (F17), two women artists, Iryna Kalyuzhna and Tatiana Albitska-Kostomarova, offer a booth full of presence, joy, and quiet strength. Kalyuzhna paints women who hold your gaze. Classical in posture, contemporary in spirit, her figures radiate self-possession. These aren’t idealized musesm they’re modern women, wholly at ease in their own skin.

Next to them, Albitska-Kostomarova’s sculpted women smile with their eyes closed, untouched by judgment or urgency. Their soft, rounded forms resist beauty standards and simply exist — content, grounded, here and now. No need to prove anything, just feel.

Together, these works remind us of a radical idea: that being present in your body, your joy, your truth, is more than enough. This booth is a breath of fresh air.

10. Joseph Ford – Booth B12

Tucked toward the end of the hall, Joseph Ford’s booth feels like stepping into a glitch in reality. A photographer with the mind of a conceptual artist, Ford creates meticulously staged images that depict scenes which never happened, but could have, somewhere in an alternate, slightly off-kilter version of our world. The impossible made almost plausible.

His surreal, hyper-polished prints are visually flawless, yet filled with narrative tension. They stop you in your tracks, not to explain, but to provoke. Did that really happen? Could it? You may never know, but you’ll enjoy staying in the question. This is the perfect booth to pause at before your coffee break, and perhaps the one that stays with you longest after you leave.

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We hope your visit to Discovery Art Fair Cologne 2025 is filled with inspiration, meaningful encounters, and maybe even the start, or growth, of your own art collection. Don’t hesitate to dive into conversation with the brilliant artists behind the works; they’re just as engaging as their creations.

Discovery Art Fair Cologne is open from 3-6 April, 2025 at XPOST, Cologne.

Photos by Stefan Maria Rother.