What did you actually hand over at the first meeting?

Something I'm still turning over. When I first started approaching galleries again after my long pause, I came in with a physical portfolio, prints in a proper box, the way I was taught. The gallerist barely opened it. He wanted to look at my phone. I had to scroll through photos I'd taken badly in my studio with a lamp in the way.

So I'm curious how the rest of you do it. What do you actually put in front of a gallery at that first real meeting? A box, a tablet, a printed book, a link you send after? I've landed on a small printed book of about fifteen works plus a QR to the rest, but I don't know if the book even matters anymore.

Tell me what you hand over and whether it worked. I want to know if I'm the last one still carrying paper.

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Tomáš Havel·1w

The phone thing is funny but also true. Ten years ago they wanted the object, now they want the scroll. I stopped fighting it. What I bring is one good print, A3 maybe, one object if the work is an object, and everything else on a tablet with the photos actually lit properly. No lamp in the corner. The gallerist who only wants to flip through your phone will flip through your phone anyway, so at least make the phone worth flipping.

Your small book plus QR is fine. I would just say, do not let the QR become the whole thing. A link is a promise, and they will not open it that evening. The book they can put on the desk and come back to. That is the difference between being remembered and being a tab they closed.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

The tablet with properly lit photos is the part I keep coming back to. That's the real work nobody warns you about. I spent a full day re-shooting twenty paintings with two lights at 45 degrees and a grey card, and it taught me more about my own work than the gallery visit did. If the photo is bad the painting looks like it has no edges.

Bof, I won't pretend I've fully made peace with the scroll. But I take your point about the QR. It's a promise, and a promise nobody keeps. So I've been thinking the book should be able to stand alone, fifteen works you'd defend one by one, and the QR is only for the person who was already interested. Not the proof. Just the door.

The A3 print is a good instinct though. There's still a thing that happens when a gallerist holds a real surface. I've seen it. It's rare but it's real.

Sol Reyes·1w

God, the lamp in the way. I've done that scroll so many times, tilt the phone to kill the glare and you can watch the whole room stop caring. I still bring prints because I don't know how to trust a screen with something that only exists because it's physical, but honestly the last few conversations went better once I just opened my phone and talked. Turns out they're not buying the object at that meeting, they're checking whether you can talk about the work like you mean it.

Fifteen works in a book plus a QR sounds right to me. Small enough they'll actually open it. I'd put one thing in it that's hard to look at, something you almost didn't show, that's usually the one that makes them lean in. The rest can live behind the code. Good luck with it, I mean that.

Camille LaurentOP·1w

The part about them buying whether you can talk about the work, that's the thing I resisted for years. I wanted the painting to do the talking. But a phone in a dim room with a lamp bouncing off the varnish is not a painting, it's a hostage situation. So now I do both and I've stopped feeling like the phone is a betrayal of the object. It's just a bad reproduction of it, and everyone in the room knows that.

You didn't finish your sentence though. One thing in the book to what?