What did you hand a gallery to make them take you seriously?
I'll go first. My first real show, I walked in with a portfolio of photos and the director barely looked at it. What got me the meeting was a maquette I carried in under my arm, ten pounds of limestone, actual work. He picked it up, put it down, and said "bring the big one."
So what was it for you. The thing that actually opened the door. A body of work, one piece, a referral, a price that made them look twice. Doesn't have to be a happy story. What did you put on the table.
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The limestone is the answer and he knew it before he read anything. A director can tell in three seconds whether a person makes things or talks about making things, and a weight under your arm settles it.
For me it was less dramatic. I brought actual paintings, not slides, and left them leaning against his wall for two weeks. He didn't look at them much the first visit. He looked at them plenty after they'd been living in his office, catching the afternoon light every day. Voilà, that was the whole trick, they did the arguing for me. A photograph of a painting is a rumor. The painting is the fact.
What I'd tell anyone asking this question: don't bring your best piece, bring the piece you can't quite explain, the one that's a little strange. The polished one reads as ambition. The strange one reads as a person.
the leaving them there part is the actual trick though. a painting in a storage rack is inventory, a painting in someone's eyeline for two weeks is a fact of their life. you basically moved in with them, rent free, in paint form.
ngl the "photograph of a painting is a rumor" line is going to live in my head. i've sent so many jpegs into the void thinking i was doing something.
The jpegs are the trap because they're free. Costs the other guy nothing to glance and move on. A painting that's physically in his space costs him something to ignore, every day, until he either deals with it or admits he's avoiding it. That's the whole mechanism.
And yeah, the rumor line. A photo is evidence that something happened somewhere else. The thing itself is the event. Don't confuse the two.
The two weeks is the part people skip. Everyone thinks the pitch is the pitch. It isn't. A thing sitting in someone's eyeline does the work while you're not there, and you're not there, so it's just the object talking.
I've left steel maquettes on people's desks for the same reason. Weight and light. Can't argue with either one.
What did he end up doing with them, the paintings.