Artists, whichever gallery you work with, remember, save, and reread the curator’s advice before going to bed.

• If you want to become a gallery artist, do not call the director’s personal number at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. Nor at 8:45. In fact, do not call at all. And do not tell us how talented your husband’s paintings are, with their awesome colours, and how it is not yet clear which movement they belong to, but they are unquestionably works of genius. The gallery has an email address—it is listed everywhere, on the website and on social media—so send your portfolio and biography there.

• If you have been selected for an exhibition, read the agreement—it usually already contains the answers to ALL your questions. Prepare your works exactly as the gallery requests. Do not start preparing for the exhibition the night before it opens. Arrive on time for the installation and bring only the works that were selected.
• If you are working with a gallery and participating in a project, do not put your logo, personal website, or social-media links on the paintings, in your video introduction, or beneath the event announcement. The gallery has organised an exhibition for you, promoted it, hung your paintings, and given you its time and attention, so do not forget to credit the organisers. This is simply good business etiquette and basic human decency.
• If someone has bought your work, do not track the client down on Facebook and send them private messages: So, how do you like it? Have you hung it on the wall? Send me a photo! I could also paint something else for you directly, without the Gallery, for half the price!

• During another artist’s exhibition opening, do not spread your portfolio out in front of the director and curator and explain your ideas for every future project. After the private view, email us an introduction and your portfolio.
• Once you have reached a preliminary agreement with a gallery about a future exhibition, do not submit the agreed works to other projects. Who will want to work with you if you cannot be relied upon?
• Once a client has commissioned and paid for a painting, and you have agreed to complete it within the specified period, do not announce on the deadline that you feel no inspiration to paint it.

• If you decide to offer discounts on your works—for example, on your social media—inform the gallery and agree on them in advance. Otherwise, your work may be discounted by you but not on the gallery’s website. That is not collaboration.
• Do not inflate the prices of your works in private conversations with clients. It often happens that  you say that your painting costs, for instance, 50,000 roubles, while the client has already seen it on the website for 42,000 roubles—and that price even includes the gallery’s commission.
• If you agreed on the price of your work with the gallery and then forgot about it, do not simply quote a different price at random in your next conversation—which is invariably higher. Check your notes so that you do not make yourself look foolish.

All these incidents are real, and any resemblance is purely coincidental!

Wishing everyone good spirits and fruitful collaboration! 

Curator Sasha Rishar