Open Call to Closing Bid

There is more good art being made right now than the art world has walls for. Most of it goes unseen: finished, photographed, and left in the dark of a studio rack or a storage unit, waiting for a gallery slot that may never come.

Openhalle exists to get that work into the light. Every quarter, we run an open call that any artist can enter. Selected works are hung in a curated exhibition at Weserhalle in Berlin and sold in an online auction open to bidders anywhere. No roster, no waiting list, no introductions needed — the work is judged on the wall.

Where it comes from

Openhalle grew out of Weserhalle, a Berlin gallery nearly a decade into championing emerging artists from its storefront in Neukölln. The auctions started in the room itself — a hammer, a crowd, whoever turned up bid. When the room couldn’t hold everyone who wanted in, the bidding moved online. The exhibition never did.

Same room, same hammer: now open to anyone, anywhere.

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