Hanging a show
Yesterday we rented a minivan that held seven of us, including the driver and went out to hang the art exhibit. Alan Hashimoto organized this speaking seminar at a huge university in Seoul. As part of their trip here, the folks that were former students of Alan that presented at the university brought work to display in a gallery outside of Seoul.
I begged Alan to let me in the show, and since I actually brought some nice prints to give away as gifts, I had work to display. I mounted them on foam-core I bought at the Kyobo Building the night before. Little did we know the gallery we were going to was 1 1/2 hours outside of Seoul, so we were crammed into this TINY little van getting out there.
But, once we got there the gallery is beautiful, right on the shore of a very wide part of the North Han River, mountains, trees, there were very low lying clouds and the light was incredible. For the first time I think I actually saw the idealized Korea as they depict in the ancient landscape paintings with my own eyes. Honestly I didn't think it existed. Now I know that it does.
So, we're hanging 70+ pieces of art, it takes us all day to get it hung, and as I can I sneak a look outside at this fabulous landscape and want to be outside hiking. The shows opening is tomorrow, so I'm going to try to go out there early before it starts and do some photography of the mountains and river there. Very very beautiful, and I know a great image is there, I just need to have some time to make it.
The owner of the gallery is a very RICH famous painter. We hit it off when I asked him the name of his tiny little dog. It was colored black and white, and his name translates into 'chess piece'. I jokingly told him the name of my dog was 'dog soup' and he and his staff got a big laugh. He showd me his gallery which is beautiful and has a huge deck right on the shore of the river. He's having a chamber orchestra come tonight to play for the opening, and many people will come (he claims), even though it's an hour and a half drive out of the city to get there.
The guys that all brought there work and presented at the university had some technical difficulties. They all brought their work mounted on foam-core, but they'd all done it in the states where the humidity was LOW...once the pieces were unpacked here where the humidity was HIGH...well, their boards started to curl, and the prints started to bubble. Nerves were on edge, but we couldn't do anything about it.
Galleries in Korea are a bit different than in America. The gallery owner expects the artist to have all of the supplies to hang and present the art. So, they didn't have anything to use except for some push-pins. We couldn't hang 70+ pieces with a dozen tacks, so some guys headed into town with one of the gallery assistants to look for something better. 'Town' is 20 minutes away and is SMALL, so they didn't find anything that we could use.
After some scrounging with the gallery facilities manager, we managed to dig up a box of nails to use in an air-nailer. He thought we were crazy, but these were desperate times, so we pulled them apart with some pliers and started mounting the art to the walls.
We decided to hang the pieces slightly lower, taking into consideration that Korean's on average are shorter than Americans. We wanted to make very sure that the pieces were hung properly for the audience and went to great lengths deciding how much lower to hang them. When I was walking through the gallery looking at the work with the owner he mentioned that Americans typically hang work too high. He thought that we should have hung them about 10 centimeters lower so that they would be at the correct viewing height for Koreans. I told him what we had done, and he got a chuckle out of it. I asked him if we should re-hang the entire show and he said absolutely not, that it wouldn't be a problem. I think it's terribly ironic.
It actually has a very minimalist feel, with the galvanized nails that are just big enough to be seen, no frames, all of the pieces mounted on foam-core. I think the show looks great. I'll shoot some images of the pieces exhibited in the gallery.
We got back very late (I rode in the storage compartment of the van...), but wanted to get out and do some walking (we have walked a LOT since coming here), so we walked back down to the big book store, the Kyobo Building. Since we've been fed a lot by other people, I felt like splurging and spent 9000 Won (about 9 dollars) on some Bul Ko Gi which was very good. The lady cooked it right at our table and it was very good.
I did get up really early yesterday morning and went down to Chong-No 3-ga and photographed the old electronics market in the pouring rain. Got some very nice images from that. and got home in plenty of time to catch the van to head out to the gallery.
That's all for now.
I begged Alan to let me in the show, and since I actually brought some nice prints to give away as gifts, I had work to display. I mounted them on foam-core I bought at the Kyobo Building the night before. Little did we know the gallery we were going to was 1 1/2 hours outside of Seoul, so we were crammed into this TINY little van getting out there.
But, once we got there the gallery is beautiful, right on the shore of a very wide part of the North Han River, mountains, trees, there were very low lying clouds and the light was incredible. For the first time I think I actually saw the idealized Korea as they depict in the ancient landscape paintings with my own eyes. Honestly I didn't think it existed. Now I know that it does.
So, we're hanging 70+ pieces of art, it takes us all day to get it hung, and as I can I sneak a look outside at this fabulous landscape and want to be outside hiking. The shows opening is tomorrow, so I'm going to try to go out there early before it starts and do some photography of the mountains and river there. Very very beautiful, and I know a great image is there, I just need to have some time to make it.
The owner of the gallery is a very RICH famous painter. We hit it off when I asked him the name of his tiny little dog. It was colored black and white, and his name translates into 'chess piece'. I jokingly told him the name of my dog was 'dog soup' and he and his staff got a big laugh. He showd me his gallery which is beautiful and has a huge deck right on the shore of the river. He's having a chamber orchestra come tonight to play for the opening, and many people will come (he claims), even though it's an hour and a half drive out of the city to get there.
The guys that all brought there work and presented at the university had some technical difficulties. They all brought their work mounted on foam-core, but they'd all done it in the states where the humidity was LOW...once the pieces were unpacked here where the humidity was HIGH...well, their boards started to curl, and the prints started to bubble. Nerves were on edge, but we couldn't do anything about it.
Galleries in Korea are a bit different than in America. The gallery owner expects the artist to have all of the supplies to hang and present the art. So, they didn't have anything to use except for some push-pins. We couldn't hang 70+ pieces with a dozen tacks, so some guys headed into town with one of the gallery assistants to look for something better. 'Town' is 20 minutes away and is SMALL, so they didn't find anything that we could use.
After some scrounging with the gallery facilities manager, we managed to dig up a box of nails to use in an air-nailer. He thought we were crazy, but these were desperate times, so we pulled them apart with some pliers and started mounting the art to the walls.
We decided to hang the pieces slightly lower, taking into consideration that Korean's on average are shorter than Americans. We wanted to make very sure that the pieces were hung properly for the audience and went to great lengths deciding how much lower to hang them. When I was walking through the gallery looking at the work with the owner he mentioned that Americans typically hang work too high. He thought that we should have hung them about 10 centimeters lower so that they would be at the correct viewing height for Koreans. I told him what we had done, and he got a chuckle out of it. I asked him if we should re-hang the entire show and he said absolutely not, that it wouldn't be a problem. I think it's terribly ironic.
It actually has a very minimalist feel, with the galvanized nails that are just big enough to be seen, no frames, all of the pieces mounted on foam-core. I think the show looks great. I'll shoot some images of the pieces exhibited in the gallery.
We got back very late (I rode in the storage compartment of the van...), but wanted to get out and do some walking (we have walked a LOT since coming here), so we walked back down to the big book store, the Kyobo Building. Since we've been fed a lot by other people, I felt like splurging and spent 9000 Won (about 9 dollars) on some Bul Ko Gi which was very good. The lady cooked it right at our table and it was very good.
I did get up really early yesterday morning and went down to Chong-No 3-ga and photographed the old electronics market in the pouring rain. Got some very nice images from that. and got home in plenty of time to catch the van to head out to the gallery.
That's all for now.
posted by Michael at
4:01 PM
1 Comments
