Ranjana Steinruecke, co-founder of Mirchandani + Steinruecke
© Lokesh Dang, Suryan and Dang, New Delhi
The Mumbai gallery Mirchandani + Steinruecke, which counts the conceptual art pioneer Anita Dube and the 2023 Prix Pictet winner Gauri Gill among its 23-strong artist roster, will open a second location in New Delhi this month.
The 2,000 sq. ft Delhi space is located on the first floor of building in the central Defence Colony neighbourhood, near the prominent galleries Vadehra and Shrine Empire. It will be inaugurated with a solo show of drawings and paintings by the Kerala-based Aji V.N (Everness: After Jorge Luis Borges, 20 November-11 January 2025). Mirchandani + Steinruecke will continue to operate from its 5,000 sq. ft Mumbai location, which it moved to in 2022.
While Indian dealers typically maintain a physical premises in just one city, a growing number are opening second locations elsewhere in the country: Experimenter, founded in Kolkata, and Nature Morte, from New Delhi, have launched Mumbai locations in the past two years. Mirchandani + Steinruecke's forthcoming Delhi launch is the first instance of a Mumbai-headquartered gallery opening a second location outside of the city.
Setting up shop in Delhi was spurred by a desire to give Mirchandani + Steinruecke's artists a bigger platform, says its co-founder Ranjana Steinruecke. The gallery was founded in 2006 but its roots stretch back to the 1980s—it has grown accordingly and its artists need more space to exhibit, she says: "Six shows every year is no longer enough."
Then there is the opportunity to access another market in Delhi. "The pool of buyers in Delhi is larger, and typically more engaged in art. There are more forums for art there, and two major Delhi museums for contemporary art, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and the Brij, are opening in the coming years," Steinruecke says.
"Delhi has a reputation as a difficult market, which initially put me off", she adds, "but that is because it requires sustained engagement. Attending India Art Fair [in New Delhi] once a year, you only meet a slice of the collectors there. Many of them need to come to a physical gallery space in their own time to consider buying from you." Steinruecke hopes that her programme, which contains a sizeable number of Kerala-based artists who have never had solo shows before in Delhi, such as Sosa Joseph and Siji Krishnan, will prove to be a "breath of fresh air" for the capital.
Mirchandani + Steinruecke is notable for increasingly eschewing the art fair circuit. The gallery has not taken part in India Art Fair since 2022, nor will it show in the forthcoming edition of Art Mumbai (14-17 November). "I prefer to invest the money in a new space or a show-stopping exhibition," Steinruecke says, citing the gallery's ambitious mid-career retrospective of CK Rajan in 2023, "which required the expensive casting of numerous metal works in a Berlin foundry."
Although news of another Indian gallery expansion would corroborate the mounting reports of a South Asian art market boom—largely driven by heating prices for Modern art, which are boosting the contemporary sector—Steinruecke is more measured, saying that she "hasn't noticed much evidence of new collectors in Mumbai". Indeed, she notes that, just as the global art market is experiencing a period of contraction, "sales are a little on the soft side right now".
Nonetheless, with more than 20 years as a dealer under her belt, she takes a circumspect view: "We've witnessed highs and lows as a gallery. Art always prevails. You just have to keep pushing forward."
