10.12.06

Are These Prints or Posters???

Posted in Uncategorized, Bitching at 7:20 am by April

Well, the new gallery preview party is tonight. Am I nervous? Nah. Not particularly. Not yet, anyway. I have 12 hours to wrap up the last bits and pieces. Let me tell ya, I think this thing looks freaking awesome. Very museum-like. Very high-brow. Perfect… Well, almost.

One thing that bugs the hell out of me… There are two photographers that have pretty large completely unframed prints attached to the walls of their spaces with binder clips! That’s right. I said binder clips.

Now, let me ask you something. Say you’re an art buyer (which you very well may be reading this blog in the first place), are you going to spend $400 on a (limited even!) print that’s been attached to the wall like a damn poster? No. Of course not. You want a frame. And if it’s not in a frame, you want it in nice packaging with backboard, don’t you? Of course you do. Frankly, it looks shitty. I mean, it’s a good idea in theory, because the binder clips don’t puncture the work, but you don’t hang unframed prints up in a gallery… You package them and have them in a sort bin. Have I mentioned already that they look like posters? This is not your teenager’s bedroom. Plus, I noticed a couple that were already damaged!!! The gallery isn’t even open yet! See my point?

Come on, people. Get with the program. I know. I know. Framing is expensive. But let’s face the facts and realize that a photographer who deals solely in prints needs to have the proper presentation for said prints. If you’ve spent thousands of dollars on photographic equipment (which, by the way, is the standard, not the exception), I think you can spring for a few hundred dollars in frames. Then, by the way, you just tack that cost onto the cost of your prints. Art buyers know how much is costs to have stuff framed. They understand that.

Maybe I really should be a manager. Some people have zero idea what the hell they’re doing. Wake up artists… this is a business, and as such should be treated as one. If you want to be treated like a bohemian starving artist, you’ll never be anything else. If you don’t take your shit seriously, no-one else will, either.

I’m probably just a total bitch, but if I were in charge of the gallery, I’d tell them to get some frames or packaging or take their stuff home. Period. Okay, I’m done. It’s just tacky. That’s all.

Oh, well. What are you going to do? Less competition for me, I guess.

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