Starting 2020 my good friend Gretar, the owner and chef of an amazing restaurant called Staup (Sadly the place closed due to the pandemic) it was located in the center of Nesttun in Bergen. He invited me to show some good looking wrestlers in his very pretty walls. We had a meeting about having regular art shows in his restaurant to help the area to become more hip. He just wanted to support the community and say no to any kind of compensation for sales. The only catch was to be able to replace the piece that was sold if it was sold, to not have to rearrange all the paintings in the restaurant every now and then to not have blank spots. It was a nice deal.
We planned the date of the opening and talked a lot about it it was a really nice place mostly visited by couples at night, it was not a cheap place but a fine establishment with an epic cuisine. So the people who visited was good target market. It was a nice project and I got to work. A couple of months before this I showed "El Pugil" (The wrestlers) in another place and he loved it. the thing here is that I don't like to show the same pieces two times in different places, just when it's planned or completely necessary. I like to have some fresh meat every time and I love making this guys as you should already know. So I got to work and produced about 30 of them for this show. It was a nice production all of them fresh from the oven and shinny. I worked them in my studio a couple of blocks from the restaurant , that was another good excuse to have a show there I would be able to walk down and check how was everything going with no problem, but I have a kid so I needed to work in my place instead of the studio which wa slo problem but it turned a little more complicated with the logistics.
So yeah it came the day to install all the paintings and as professional as possible I went down with all my stuff and got to work it took a little over and hour to hang all of them and sort them out, I tried to have them as different as possible when next to each other that means different background color, mask and other things needed to be completely different and they needed to have at least two in between if a color was repeated. This turned to be pretty challenging but I managed. the show was looking beautiful and it was going to be open in a couple of days.
the thing is that something happened and I got a call from Gretar and told me that something was happening the Saturday of the original opening and that we needed to move it a week after to a Thursday. this is pretty normal and it happens more than you think but still is kinda complicated mostly cus I already had spammed all the people in my Facebook and Instagram about the event. I went all the way to write personal messages remembering the date4 and all that kind of shit. well I posted about the change and everyone said it was all right and no worries and we will be there and all those lies people say when they get out of a deal they don't want to be. I understand normally when you open in a gallery or a cafe you are not obliged to do anything but go and enjoy the art and in the cafe well you can have good coffee but that's that. In the case of restaurants normally people is pushed to eat something... this was not the case with Staup, not at all but the people invited didn't know that and well it comes like a forced deal.
well the next week came and the opening was horrible just a couple of friend showed up, my mother in law and her hubby, my wife and one kid from the Askøy workshop with his parents. I waited and no one else showed. I got panic to talk and it was all in all the shittiest show opening in my life. It was really bad. after that night I got some messages in Facebook about the show and how nice it was and how good the food was in Staup and all that. and that helped my obliterated Ego but still it was a hard blow to it.
It stood there for a couple of weeks, it sold a couple of nice pieces and even Gretar got one that he saw from the first day, he told me if this one don't sell I want it.
This is Gretar's Piece "El Mirador de Lejitos"
After my show there was two other artists with the same results. the openings were kinda dull and then they got sales. I realized that people don't like the restaurant show cus they are in a way obliged to have dinner and let me tell you, in Norway a dinner in a good place is quite expensive. The culture for eating out is not as in Mexico or the US.
Staup sadly closed shot time after that when the pandemic hinted us in full force.
Well that's that the tale of my worst opening ever and the sad closing of a good restaurant due to the pandemic. Gretar is back in Iceland, having a good time.
Cheers
Mr.Adolfito
remember to follow my instagram here ---> Mr.Adolfito
