Christopher Moller Gallery

More studio than factory floor, atelier than franchise, Christopher Moller Gallery is situated in a double storey townhouse in the Cape Town CBD. It is the gallery’s inviting nature and its sacramental dialogue with its artists, which makes it a tenderly human place, for here, in this quiet corner of the world, it is as though we have entered a secular church. Because of course contemporary art, these days, as Sarah Thornton has reminded us, is ‘a religion for atheists’, a world in which the fallen can find peace, where pain can be rewarded with kindness, where human fragility, despair and anxiety can be cosseted.

The Christopher Moller stable reveals not only the taste of their dealer but the value system which underpins that taste. Largely devoted to painting, it is parenthetically framed by sculpture (Andre Stead) and photography (Tony Gum). But it is no doubt the emphasis on painting which is the gallery’s signature and calling card.

As they say, there is ‘no accounting for taste’. The key thing, however, is to discover that taste within oneself. Since 2007 when Christopher Moller Gallery opened its doors, it has been the nurturing of a singularity of taste which has defined its evolution. It is a place where the loveless will find love, a place where beauty and truth still matter.