opening party done and done.
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a strange night. hard to quantify how successful it was though. on one level things couldnt have gone better. a ton of people came including a photographer and interviewer from a tokyo artist magazine and a gallery owner friend. ive met with the gallery owner a couple of times now and will be helping her start up a new gallery in Harajuku in June. Everyone who came couldnt have been nicer. they dressed up, brought piles of flowers, wine, fancy japanese sweets, and presents too. I had worried that only a few people would come, but they packed the place from wall to wall. I got to meet with people I hadnt seen for months and even some classmates from Jimmy’s school in Nagoya came. if you are reading this and came to the show THANK YOU!!!
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I could have done better in the sales department, but there was some positive movement there. and that kind of led to the one big hiccup that ended up putting a stink on the whole little party. the dude who owned the place pretty much blew up at the end of the night and told me at the after party dinner in a loud enough voice for everyone to hear that my friends were basically losers and i didnt need them if they didn’t care enough to buy something. I didnt know what to say to that… it isnt his main business and the publicity was great but that didnt stop him from yelling “fuck them” and “fuck it” a good 20 times during the course of the evening.
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I dont really know what led to that. The events of the day were: first he showed up 4 hours late for our meeting in the morning w/o explanation. maybe he had some problem somewhere. whatever it was, before he showed up a photographer and reporter were there waiting. he apparently knew about them coming but for some reason he didnt want me to talk to them and told me nothing about it. i kind of tried to listen into their conversation in the next room, wondering if they came for his shop or for me… and they had come for my work. The woman had all these printouts from my site and really wanted to talk to me. why wasnt i informed about this fact? i guess he assumed my work would be more interesting with the added mystery. we eventually did an interview but i couldnt concentrate because the whole thing didnt make any sense. anyway, once people started coming he just got more and more uptight, so that it was really obvious that something was bothering him– it was a difficult to enjoy the event with that distraction. apparently he really believed that we would be unloading thousands of dollars of paintings that night and when we wernt millionaires after 3 hours the dude was red with frustration. I cant make sense of it, but that was pretty uncomfortable.
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aside from the childish outbursts I’m content with the work in the show, and glad everyone could get together. thank you thank you thank you everyone.
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anyway. the next exhibition has been decided for August in my new studio… an Oni-themed collaboration of madness like the Tom Thumb Gallery back from the Truman days. good times buddy, look out.
