What did you bring to the gallery, the work or the photos? I brought photos and I think that was the mistake.

First gallery that ever showed me, I walked in with a portfolio of photographs. Nice prints. The owner looked at six of them, put them down, and asked if I had anything in the back of the truck. I didn't. I had driven four hours with nothing but paper.

She gave me a show anyway, two years later. But I've never forgotten that she wanted to put her hands on something. Stone doesn't photograph for shit and I should have known it.

So what did you actually take in. The piece itself, maquettes, photos, a tablet. And did it matter or did they just want to talk.

Asking because I'm putting together a list for a younger guy I know and I don't want to hand him my grudge as advice.

4comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

4 comments

Dani Okafor·59m

ok so I'm the opposite and now I'm second guessing everything haha. I brought actual work, like wet-into-wet originals in a flat file box, and honestly half of them were still slightly warped from a bad stretch. The director picked up one, held it to the window, and I nearly died. Watercolor does not survive being handled, and I'd been warned, and I still did it because photos felt like showing someone a photo of your kid instead of the kid.

but here's the thing I keep circling on: a maquette or a small original lets them feel the scale and the surface, and photographs let them see it flat and confident with no buckling and no glare off the glass. Stone doesn't photograph, sure, but a 9x12 on cold press under gallery lights is its own kind of lie too. So maybe it's both and it just depends what you want them to walk away believing about the work.

did she ever actually tell you what she wanted in the truck, like raw material? or was it more she wanted to see if you could make something with your hands in the room. that distinction would eat at me for years honestly

Roman PetrakOP·5m

Held it to the window. Yeah. That's the moment you find out paper isn't stone.

Here's my honest read on your dilemma. You're not choosing between the work and the photos, you're choosing what can survive the trip. A maquette does both. Something small and solid they can pick up, turn over, put down hard, and it doesn't care. That's why I started taking one finished piece plus a maquette for anything bigger. The piece proves you can do it, the maquette lets them handle the idea without wrecking anything.

Warped is worse than flat though. If it's cockling, they see it before they see the color, and now the first thing they know about you is a mistake you already knew about. I'd have fixed the stretch before I went anywhere near that door.

Keep bringing the real thing. Just bring the one that won't die on the table.

Ramesh Jha·59m

Myself Ramesh, Mithila painting from Madhubani. I am reading this and nodding.

When we go to show our work, we carry the paintings itself, wrapped in old cloth, and yes the paper gets bent on the bus. But I have learned one thing ji. A photograph of Mithila painting shows the shape only. The fine line, the brush of the twig, the rice paste that sits a little raised on the surface, the smell of the natural colour, all this is lost. The gallery person wants to touch, to lift the corner, to see it in real light. Then only they understand what is the labour inside.

The first time we went to Delhi with only photos in a folder, same thing happened. They looked and said nice, and nothing more. Second time we carried the actual cloth pieces, small ones also, and the talk changed completely. Hands want the thing, not the picture of the thing.

So my suggestion is, take both. Photos for their file and their memory, but one or two real pieces, even small, so they can hold. The work speaks for itself when it is in the room. Wishing you well for the new show 🙏

Roman PetrakOP·25m

Ramesh, you're describing the whole thing better than I did. The raised rice paste under the fingers, the twig line. I spent thirty years telling people stone has to be walked around, and here you are saying the same about a painting on paper. A photograph flattens the labor right out of it.

Bus and bent corners, that's a real cost. But you're right that the corner is the point. Someone who lifts the edge of the paper is already halfway to buying.

What do you do about the ones that get creased in transit? Anything, or does it just become part of the piece?