I held open the door for the reporter, walked into the art gallery behind him, and continued answering his question.
"Look, I've never done this for the money. Making money was just a means to keep doing my art. Years ago I worked two jobs, may have made $25,000 and spent $15,000 of it on materials, studio space, whatever. Say I made $200,000 last year, then I spent $150,000 on equipment. The more money, the more expensive art. It's a luxury, but I don't know it makes the art better .. the inspiration is the same, maybe with fewer resources to get the same point apart it becomes clearer, more sparse ... more impactful ... better art."
"So when you say you intend to take risks with this show ... you mean?"
"Oh, I have no idea how this show will be taken by the public. It might be the end of my career in a paying sense. I don't care about that. I entered this project with a clear idea of the emotional response I wanted to awaken from my audience. Whether or not they will want to return for more, I don't know."
"That's very coy. What subjects are you covering? A show called 'Speechless' doesn't sound like your typical political and social commentary."
"Maybe so. This is more emotional in nature. There is political commentary, sexual imagery, and also an exploration of more standard deconstructed line/color. Some more multimedia than typical."
That ended the interview, as the reporter left to begin studying the artwork and the gallery owner, Paul, stepped up to introduce me to a pair of his past clients. They were intrigued by the first installation.
The art had begun at the door, a card reader which everyone entering the building was aked to scan their driver's license. Randomly, one out of five patrons was asked to step into a side room, which was a dark room with a window facing the rest of the show. A placard inside the show explained the piece -- that once six people were in the room, one would be randomly chosen and forcibly removed from the show, not to be allowed to return.
The point was to generate an emotional response in that person, and their companions already in the show, at seeing one of their own singled out and discriminated against.
As a joke, the placard said that I was removing some people because I didn't want anyone unlucky around me. I felt the political overtones were blatant enough that the patrons would understand it, but so often you have to be so obvious for people to get it. Of course, the scans of the licenses also served to age-check everyone who entered.
But now the room was largely full, most of the invited guests had arrived and had spent at least an hour mingling and drinking the free wine. I welcomed and embraced the Callahans -- a late-50's couple who had been supporters of mine for years. Mr. Callahan was a fairly generic, but nice, Wall Street type, and his wife Cynthia -- the stereotypical bored housewife who was trying to use her husband's money to make something of herself as a "patron of the arts." It was thinking about her, and how she was using money to accumulate art to try and increase the amount of emotional feeling in her life, that inspired the creation of this show.
She wanted a shock. I think most people need a shock once in a while.
One installation in the room was three clear tubes, mounted vertically in the floor, with a string of LED lights inside of them, pulsing slowly in gentle tones of green, purple and blue. I was ready to begin the creation of the finale piece, so I pulled out my phone, logged into the computer controlling the digital installations, and started a countdown program. The tubes flashed red three times, then resumed their previous cooler tones. A signal to my cohort -- a one minute warning.
The program continued to count down, and also triggered three large screens that had been playing projections of a video I had shot on a trip to a shipbreaking operation in Bangladesh to rotate away from the projector and parallel to the front windows, completely obscuring them.
I moved away from the Callahans and spoke to another patron whose name I didn't catch, apparently he had bought a painting from me some years earlier.
The three tubes pulsed red one more time. The signal to begin.
An attractive woman by the bar, clad in a shimmering purple strapless dress, was finishing small talk with another couple. She set down her glass, excused herself, and stepped away. She removed a small cloth from her purse, set it down and started to walk across the room toward where I stood, facing away from her talking to the former client.
She left her shoes next to the pulsing tubes, opened the cloth -- which turned out to be a black mask -- and put it on. Then without slowing her stride she unzipped her dress and let it fall, revealing her completely naked body.
As she approached me I heard gasps and saw heads turning, then felt her hand on my shoulder. I turned and she leaned up to my lips, kissing me deeply and ground her body into mine.
Chatter spread around the room as the guests saw me kiss her back, slapping my hand onto her ass, pulling it against me. She twisted and ground her crotch against mine.
"What ... How .. Why ... Disgusting ... Is this???" I could hear the confused babbling of my audience. I assumed some were grabbing their coats and heading for the exits, maybe some of the more curious would push closer. But I didn't care. I felt Claudia's incredible figure pressed against me, her breasts straining against my chest, her thighs pushing toward mine. We kissed more deeply, I ran one hand down the side of her face and pressed it between us to cup her breast. Her hand hooked my belt, then pressed between my legs to feel my growing cock.
