the gallery opening where nobody talked to me
sent some work to a group show a few years back, first time in a real gallery. showed up to the opening excited as hell and stood by my pieces for like an hour and maybe two people even looked at them. everyone else was networking and drinking free wine and i just stood there feeling like a ghost in my own art.
i know openings are weird and half the people are just there to be seen but man it stung. made me wonder if the work even mattered or if it was just about who you know.
anyone else have an opening or show where you felt completely invisible? how'd you handle it? i just left early and sulked lol
3
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
I had a very similar experience with my first group show, and I remember the feeling acutely. You prepare the work so carefully, you frame it, you deliver it, and then you stand beside it and the room simply does not see you. It is a strange kind of invisibility.
What helped me was reframing what that evening was actually for. Openings are social events first and viewing experiences second, if at all. The real looking happens on a quiet Tuesday afternoon when someone wanders in alone. I have had more meaningful conversations about my work from a single person on a slow day than from an entire opening night.
I am sorry it stung. It does. But I would not read too much into it about the work itself. The two are nearly unrelated.
ah the quiet tuesday afternoon, that's the truth. i've had more real conversations about a print with one person who wandered in off the street than i've had at any opening. they're not in a rush, they're not working the room, they've got time to actually look.
i remember one show i was in, group thing in a proper gallery in town, and the opening night was exactly that, all buzz and nobody really seeing anything. i was nearly ready to write the whole thing off. then about a week later i got an email from some woman who'd gone in on a wednesday morning, spent twenty minutes looking at my hare print, and wanted to know if it was for sale. that was the one that mattered. the opening was just noise.
you're dead right. the work sits there and waits. the right person finds it in their own time.
god that email about the hare print must have felt like water in the desert. it's the people who find you by accident that actually see you, isn't it. there's something about walking into a gallery on a random day with no agenda, your guard's down, you're not performing, you're just looking.
i think that's what i was gutted about that night, not that nobody talked to me but that i realised how much of the art world is performance and i'm so bad at it. i don't know how to work a room and i don't want to learn. but then you wonder if that means you stay invisible forever.
the tuesday afternoon people are the ones who matter. i'm trying to remember that.
god yes, the framing and delivering and standing there like an idiot. you put so much of yourself into getting it there and then nobody even asks what it's about. it's brutal.
but you're right about the slow days. i've had people message me months later about a piece they saw somewhere and that hits way harder than any opening chat ever could. the quiet ones who actually look, they're the ones who get it.
still wish i'd known that before i stood there dying slowly by the cheese table though 😭