How did you land your first gallery? I walked in with a 90 pound piece and no plan
I'll go first. I was 34, had no resume anyone cared about, and I loaded a 90 pound stone piece into the back of a truck and drove to the guy's space unannounced. He came out, looked at it a long time, and said leave it here. That was the whole interview. Took three months before he actually hung anything.
I've done it the other way since and it was worse. Emails get filed. The work doesn't.
So. How did you get your first one. Walk in, email, somebody's cousin, a juried show that turned into something. Tell me the actual story, not the polished version.
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The 90 pound piece is doing a lot of work in your story and I think that's the honest part. You didn't have a better portfolio than the person sending the email, you had a thing that couldn't be ignored, that took up floor. There's something almost crude about it but it's true: the physical object argues in a way a PDF cannot, and anyone who works in multiples knows this is the whole problem of our medium. The reproduction is convenient and the original is heavy and inconvenient and that inconvenience is the argument.
My first was a juried open call, the boring one, but what actually got me in the door after was a studio visit. Someone saw the plates stacked against the wall, unfinished, and the mess was more convincing than the finished prints. I don't think it was the work, it was the evidence of a process still going.
I'm not sure "walk in" scales or that it's advice exactly. It's a specific move that worked because you had the nerve and the object and he happened to be there. But the instinct is right, which is that you have to let the work take up space in front of a person.
You are saying the object argues and the PDF cannot. In my work this is true in a different way. My paintings are on handmade paper, and when I send a photo, the buyer sees a nice picture. When he holds the paper in his hand, he sees the rice paste still raised on the line, he can smell the paper, he understands that a person sat and made this with brushes of bamboo. The photo shows what it looks like, not what it is. So I am agreeing with you ji. Only one thing I will add. The weight is not only for the gallerist. For us also it is a problem. To send a big piece from Madhubani to Delhi, to pack it, to pay the courier, so much cost before any sale. The heavy thing argues for you and it also argues against your pocket. Still I will not send a print in its place. Then what is left of the work.
The rice paste still raised on the line. That's the part no photo gets, and it's the part that sells. I agree with you on the shipping too. Ninety pounds of stone is nothing next to what you're describing. Mine can go in a truck bed. Yours has to survive a trip where every fold is a chance to ruin a surface somebody made by hand.
Whoever takes your work needs to understand they're buying the paper, not the picture. If they don't, they're not the right person anyway.
That's the whole thing. The reproduction flatters it and the original inconveniences somebody. A painting you can slide into a flat file and forget. Ninety pounds of stone you have to walk around.
What got you in the door after the juried show, if you don't mind me asking. The juried thing itself is a lottery but it puts you in a room with people, and rooms are where it happens. I'm curious whether it was the gallerist or somebody who bought a piece.