the private view

to bring on my hyper activeness keep me inside when it is nice out. to make it worse cut down on the amount of light there is during the day.

to finish hanging the show and clean up a bit, we were at the gallery at 10 i made every excuse to run errands - needed more tape, get bagels, cut these images at the photo shop - but what i really saw was the light travel across the sky.

as openings go it wasn’t bad as there weren’t as many platitudes as usual. quite a few people challenged me on what i was thinking and what the photographs “meant”. this could be due to the fact that i wasn’t showing paintings and the viewers weren’t quite sure. due to this i had my first crit in years. the relationship of the images in the triptychs, the constant debate on whether the images were desolate or not, trying to take the exhibition as a whole rather than individual snaps. it was determined that i was an isolated person and that all sharp objects should be kept from me.

all the conversation stemmed around what i constantly fear the problem with shows to be - or at least one that i cannot solve - less control. in the end the tables were turned a bit as went into my harangue that walking into the gallery they could see pretty much everything at once which takes away surprise or any sort of build-up. grabbed one of the books on display and stated that this is just the opposite, ideas take time to evolve as one - in this case - can see only one snap at a time, when the page is turned it is memory, one has to keep going through the specifics to get to the generalities, in an exhibition, one sees the generality -or the links - first then works one’s way down to the specific, in hanging the show i felt like capability brown where i had to make sure all the sight lines worked the way that i wanted them to. people can view work on walls without committing themselves to it.

i then had more wine and calmed down.

the pleasures and terrors of books manifested itself as three small books sold - portable art and souvenir - remember a.h. at goldsmiths’ saying paintings to show, drawings to sell, books are my drawings.

but then one person challenged bent on why they should by a photographer for 2000kr when they can have the book for 1500kr. the reason was that no one would buy the book as the price it really cost to make it with a reasonable mark-up. as it was an artist book, i wanted him to get the book but buying a photograph would be less problematic for me.

i am guessing neither will sell.

dinner in christiania at spiseloppen great vegetarian meal but once again had me wondering about this great free state when such a pricy restaurant could be there - i wondered who of the original founders of the state could afford to eat there and if one didn’t know the area one would think that all the graffiti and the steps up to the place was a great marketing design skill.

i also wondered if they served hash?

bent couldn’t understand why i had høner bejer instead of his red wine when the first evening i drank a great deal of it. he offered as it is his ritual, i drank it out of courtesy but wondered if he was trying to get me drunk. i been trying to drink the local beers but have stretched that a bit as the true local beer is tuborg - offices at the end of the street - so local micro-brews.
i also wondered if they served hash?