The Weekly Footnote

by Anika Bukon

For those uninitiated into the ritual, gallery-going in LA often involves the visiting of multiple spaces in a single Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. You pile into a car with your friends (because only the most dedicated masochist takes public transport in LA when you’re hitting multiple venues) and start your gallery crawl with the one that seems least interesting yet most convenient to the actually interesting one you want to finish the night at.    

If you do it often enough you’ll start to see the same familiar faces running around town. Here is who you will encounter: 

1. The True Young Artist. Usually female (but not always) and farm fresh. She’s in the middle of her BFA, doesn’t hate this yet, and has had a smile etched across her face since etching class earlier today. She has a million ideas on how she wants to stage shows in non-white-box spaces and has started her own zine or reading group as a way to build “community.” She is earnest, has interesting music taste, and possibly not yet doomed. She will talk to you if she hasn’t turned up with seven friends.
2. The Gallerina. She works in the low-yet-somehow-still-exclusive levels of the business, often at the front desk. She shows up because their friend (another gallerina) is working the opening. They are not smiling, most likely because their hair is pulled back so tight it’s frozen their faces into a nonstop grimace. They are usually under-dressed and if you’re easily-intimidated they give the impression that they’re cooler than you, but only because it’s literally part of their job. People who don’t know how the art world works aren’t supposed to approach gallery girls—in art or life. You will get side-eye if you attempt a walk up, unless you remember they’re as starved for stimulation as they are, well, starved and actually will talk to any guy who looks like he was once in a band and even marginally employable and any woman who might have drugs.
3. The As-Yet Unserious Artist. They don’t have a retrospective at LACMA, a published monograph, or stratospheric auction prices but they do have an MFA, a spiel, and the confidence to think you want to hear it. They show up with their cohort or are there because they’re in the group show organized by someone in their cohort. They have made a bold-if-unsuccessful wardrobe choice. They are civilized enough to act like they’re just there for the drinks but they’re watching you to see if you’re a collector or gallerist or fuckable or otherwise worth their time. As soon as its socially-acceptable they will unleash a well-practiced, school-induced and previously-released spiel in hopes that you will understand their brilliance and be intrigued. Often accompanied by at least two unattractive people of a completely random age who unaccountably are.
4. The Culture Flexer. They’re friends of an artist but they just want to be around a creative crowd so they can tell their friends at work about it. Typically artist-adjacent and dazzled by the sight of not so much the art (no-one is) but that there’s, like, all these people here doing this and there’s wine. It’s cheaper than the theater or the opera and they keep meeting all these interesting people. Other than the artist whose show it is and that artist’s mother, this is the only person who actually wants to be here.
5. The Inexplicable Famous Person. It’s LA, so you go “Is that…?” and it is. “Oh yeah,” says the person you came with “they’re friends with” the artist or the gallery owner. You would not associate them with this artist. They dress like shit but seem to be in a very good mood, and are surrounded by a cloud of hangers-on. You briefly entertain the idea that maybe what they usually do is somehow worse than this but dismiss it because nothing could be.
6. The Black-Eyed Veteran. Usually a writer, critic or other gallerist who is at a particular exhibition because they feel obligated to be. They will not admit that they feel obligated. If they see someone they know they will smile a smile so brief that it is a mere signifier of “smile” and attempt to communicate with their eyes that it was merely a social gesture and the most merciful thing you could do at that point is stab them in a fragile yet vital area. They may talk to someone they are introduced to but don’t look particularly happy about needing to do so. They are drinking all the wine but not because it is good. They are writing this article.

Image: Staff