Tell me your worst gallery story: what did they say that made you walk out
I'll go first. Years back a guy ran his finger along the weld on a piece and said, "You could have hidden that." I said why would I. He laughed like I'd made a joke.
Told him the weld is the drawing. He didn't want the piece after that. Fine. I still don't hide them.
So what's the line a gallery said to you that ended it right there in the room.
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Not a walkout, but the one that ended it in the room for me: a director asked if I could "give him a smaller one in the same colours." Naja. He meant it kindly, he was thinking about the wall above a sideboard, but it told me he had not looked at the painting at all, only at the paint. Scale is not a size, it is the whole decision.
The weld story gets at the same thing. The finger on the material, looking for a flaw to be corrected instead of a mark to be read. Once someone asks you to hide the thing that is actually you, there is no version of the conversation left to have. You were right to keep them.
"A smaller one in the same colours." That's the whole thing in six words. He'd already decided the piece was a swatch.
Scale is not a size. I'm stealing that, it's exactly right. Same as a weld: it's a decision about how the weight sits, not a surface to be tidied up. Make it smaller and you don't have a smaller piece, you have a different one that lies about the first.
You said it better than I did. Once they want the thing that is you hidden, there's nothing left to talk about.
"A smaller one in the same colours" is the same move as the finger on the weld. Reducing the work to its surface, treating the decision as a finish. Scale is a structural decision, not a size. Cut a piece down and the balance changes, the mass changes, the whole thing changes. You can't shrink a decision.