Carl Kostyál

Carl Kostyál opened his eponymous gallery at no. 12a Savile Row, London W1 in 2010 with the first solo exhibition of British artist Helen Marten. The gallery has gone on to give many international artists their first platform in the UK or Sweden, among them Imre Bak, Gina Beavers, Petra Cortright, Sarah Cwynar, Alex Da Corte, Mandy El-Sayegh, Jane Euler, Claire Fontaine, Tibor Gayor, Mustafa Hulusi, Alex Israel, Sergej Jensen, Basil Kincaid, Klara Lidén, Hanna Lidén, Dóra Maurer, Adam McEwen, Oscar Murillo, David Ostrowski, Timur Si Qin, Cynthia Talmadge, Amalia Ulman, Fredrik Værslev, Emma Webster, Brittney Leeanne Williams and Jonas Wood.

In May 2021, Kostyál joined forces with Gullringsbo Konstsamling, whose collection he has helped to build over a fifteen-year period, to open the gallery’s new exhibition space, Hospitalet, in the 18th century former mental asylum known as Danvikens Hospital in Nacka, Stockholm, alongside a display of the Gullringsbo collection.

Katharine Kostyál, Carl’s wife, former business partner of Jay Jopling at White Cube and former Curator at the South London Gallery, joined forces with her husband to co-run the gallery in late 2020. In her partnership with Jay Jopling, she identified artists whose work had been rarely seen in the UK or had been unfairly overlooked, introducing Günther Förg, Minjung Kim, Lee Seung-Taek, Dóra Maurer, Park Seo-Bo and Peter Schuyff to the gallery, sourcing, researching, and curating exhibitions of their work at White Cube’s London and Hong Kong galleries.

The gallery programme is focused on emerging and mid-career artists from around the globe, showing them in London, Milan, Stockholm and Hong Kong. The gallery spaces eschew the white cube: an 18th century former townhouse in Mayfair, an 18th century former mental asylum in Stockholm and a late 19th century piano nobile apartment re-modelled in the early 1960s by the quintessential Milanese architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni. In addition to the gallery spaces, Kostyál regularly stages exhibitions in other unusual locations, from the Romantic castle Stora Sundby, in Sörmland to the 19th century manor Adelsnäs Herrgård, in Åtvidaberg.

The gallery runs artist residencies in Milan, at Mohilef Studios in Los Angeles and in their home on Blidö, an island in the northern Stockholm archipelago.

Each summer the Kostyáls host an invitational Draw Jam, previously in the south of Italy and for 2025 in Luxor, Egypt, bringing artists together from all over the world to make art side by side and fostering new friendships and networks between them.

The gallery regularly publish artist monographs, most recently with Gina Beavers, Austin Lee, Szabolcs Bozó and Rebecca Ness.