Gallery openings are chaotic. They are exactly like theater “tech weeks” in every respect, except I don’t have to worry about actors forgetting their lines. Everyone wears their grittiest clothes, stays up past their bedtimes, and prepares frantically for the opening.
In this frenzy, one of the most important works was late coming through customs and wasn’t going to make it in time for the opening of the Indonesian contemporary art exhibition. While I’m not going to say we smuggled the artwork into China from Indonesia (in case the Chinese government happens to be keeping up with my blog), I will say that it arrived hurriedly in the middle of the night without passing through customs, and was magically set up by dawn. The work is a giant metallic racecar. A few days later, I was assigned to take it apart and send it to myself in the mail so it could go through customs the proper way before the government noticed. So Monday morning I learned how to take apart a car, resulting in an approximate 112% increase in manliness.
Today, it came back in the mail and I unpackaged it and put it all back together. Such is the museum life.
In short: I took apart a car, sent it to myself, and put it back together. I think that needed to be recapped.
The cherry on the cake: while I was finally cleaning/polishing it, a woman crept up out of the crowd (who was busy watching me clean/polish the car) and asked: “Excuse me sir, is this a performance piece?”
“Yes,” I replied, straight-faced, “I’m here until August 2nd”.
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