THK Gallery was founded by German photographer and collector Frank Schönau, who was joined by auction veteran Linda Pyke in 2020. It contributes to a global contemporary art discourse by showcasing, to a global audience, art  that presents alternative perspectives and aesthetics to the status quo.

THK Gallery Artists

THK Gallery works with established and emerging artists from Africa and the diaspora, as well as international artists, to present a diverse array of developing contemporary visual art forms. Among these are works in the fields of painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography.

With a strong emphasis on photography, among the gallery’s roster of artists are established photographers such as Australian-American duo Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher, whose 40 years of work have documented over 150 African cultures across 48 countries on the continent, and relative newcomers like Johannesburg-based photographer Nonzuzo Gxekwa, whose often collaborative practice explores the everyday on the streets and in the studio.

THK gallery also represents a diverse array of visual artists including the South African, Dutch Royal Academy-trained artist Andrew Kayser, whose paintings and drawings present narratives of privileged and socially disconnected suburban life, and South African multi-media artist Jake Michael Singer, whose work–including both public and private sculpture–is inspired by emergent avian behaviour in flocks and examines instances of the individual subsumed by the whole.

THK Gallery Exhibitions and Art Fairs

First opening with Icons (2018), a show presenting a broad selection of intimate celebrity portraits by famed Hollywood photographer and photo-journalist Douglas Kirkland, THK Gallery has maintained a programme of exhibitions engaging international audiences in new visual experiences and contemporary art practices. 

Alongside in-depth, solo exhibitions, the gallery holds group shows to explore and push the boundaries of contemporary art. In 2019, THK Gallery presented Reflecting on August, a show that brought together a group of artists by the common thread of a studio space in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, where they had all once stayed. Playing on that same theme of weaving connections between artists, the gallery’s 2020 group presentation //thread connects artists by the formal and conceptual interpretations of the word ‘thread’.

Beyond the gallery, THK presents its artists’ works at art fairs such as Also Known As Africa (AKAA)  in Paris, Cologne Fine Art & Design, Contemporary Istanbul; the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, and the RMB Turbine Art Fair in Johannesburg.