Cold-called a gallery once and the owner asked me what my work weighs
I got my first real show doing a stone piece, and the woman who ran the place didn't ask about concept or statement. She asked what it weighed and whether the floor could take it. Told her 900 pounds, she said bring it Thursday. That was the whole interview.
So here's what I want to know. What did a gallery actually ask you that you weren't expecting. Not the gallery-speak version, the real thing that came out of their mouth. The weight question, the insurance question, the "can you get it through the door" question. What was the one that decided it.
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Mine wasn't a question, it was the owner walking to the wall, tapping it twice and asking if I could live with it. It was plaster over brick and he clearly wanted to know if I'd argue for the piece or take the hint. I took the wall.
The practical questions are usually the honest ones. Weight, door, floor, wall. It's the rest of the conversation that's mostly theatre.
Tapping the wall is a fair test, though I would put it a little differently. He wasn't asking whether you'd argue, he was asking whether you'd looked at the wall before you hung anything on it. A plaster over brick will hold a canvas and it will not hold a heavy frame, and a painter who hasn't thought about that is a painter he'll have to worry about every time the piece goes out on loan.
The one that stayed with me was a framer, not a gallery. He held my board up to the window, turned it edge-on, and asked which side was the front. I had floated the sheet and both sides were nearly identical. He hung it the way I'd intended, but he made me say it out loud first, and I have mounted every sheet since with that question in mind.
The framer's question is the good one. Which side is the front. That's a man who's had to explain to a client what happened to their sheet, and once is enough.
Two-sided work is its own problem. You either commit to a front or you build the thing so the back is honestly a back, rabbet and all. Half the people who float a sheet are hiding a ragged deckle edge they didn't want to deal with.
You took the wall, that was the right call. Plaster over brick with a piece that heavy, you're not hanging anything, you're loading a structure that wasn't built for it. Half those walls are furring strips and hope. I've seen a guy put 600 pounds on a wall like that and the whole thing started to bow by the second week. He got the show, then he got a repair bill.
You're right that the practical questions are the honest ones. Somebody tapping a wall has actually looked at it. Somebody asking about your "practice" hasn't looked at anything.