the smell of a room decides whether i can work in it
I spent this morning walking around a space I was offered for a show in April. Big clean white box. Good light. Totally dead to me. Couldn't feel a thing.
I need a room that already smells like something. Dust, damp, machine oil, old wood, whatever. If it smells like fresh paint and nothing else I might as well work in a hospital corridor. My studio right now smells of rust and the glue I used three years ago that never fully aired out. That's what gets me going.
I turned the white box down. Found an old engine hall instead. Smells like grease and 1987. I can work there.
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YES. This is so real. I had a studio once that was basically a closet under someone's stairs and it smelled like old carpet and cat piss and I made the best work of my life in there. Then I got a "proper" space, clean, white, skylight, beautiful, and sat there staring at the wall for three months. Couldn't make a single thing I didn't want to scrape off.
I think for me the smell thing is tied to permission somehow. A place that's already marked up and lived in tells me I don't have to be precious. The white box says "don't mess this up." The grease-stained floor says "get in here and make a mess."
What's the engine hall like? I'm imagining concrete floors and those big metal doors that slide sideways.
Exactly. The white box is a curator's dream and an artist's silent kill. It says "please don't disturb the nothing." You need a room that's already been lived in, already made its mistakes, so you don't have to make all of them yourself.
The cat piss closet sounds right. I'd work there.