I have no idea whether other artists have the same experience as I do, but at the moment I find life very difficult indeed, in the build-up to an exhibition. In my case it is doubly so, because during April I will be putting on two displays of my work.* I suppose that you will have no difficulty in imagining the problems involved in selecting a body of work that hangs together in some coherent manner. You probably have an appreciation of the effort required to distribute publicity effectively. Perhaps you are thinking of the sheer physical effort involved in wrapping, transporting and hanging something like forty pieces of work. I wonder whether, however, it might have occurred to you that the most difficult aspect of the project, in some respects, is the emotional dimension of the task.
This is certainly the case with me, and the problem is doubled by the fact that in April two venues will be putting up my work for scrutiny. I presume that anybody who is selling their own work or any kind will experience a sense of personal investment in the product. I believe that in the case of art, however, the problem is intensified. In a real and significant sense putting one’s art out for sale is offering for public scrutiny a part of oneself.
Many years ago, when I was still teaching in the university, I ran a course entitled Society as Theatre, which examined the interest of the theatrical metaphor within social science. (“All the world’s stage,” and all that jazz.) A part of the course featured the work of the Polish dramaturg Jerzy Grotowski. I remember that one of the things he required of his actors was the capacity to infuse the role being played with an element of one’s inner self, necessitating sometimes a painful degree of exposure. In my experience, being a artist its very much like that (at least, if one takes the task of art seriously, and is not simply marketing a formula.) There is a sense of genuine risk in the process of exhibition. Perhaps it is the case also that, having been deprived of opportunities for exhibition for more that two years, the unfamiliarity of the experience only intensifies it. Either way, life at the moment seems like hard going.
*See “Current Events” elsewhere in the website.