I was thinking maybe just a
few people would come, but I guess the owner had a ton of connections because the
turnout for the opening was so large not everyone could even fit in the space. I
was shocked when I saw the line going down the steps, like, “Are they all
really here for us?” Then a few days later my work appeared in that place all
New York artists hope to be, the art column of the New York Times.
So a journalist from the New York Times was at the opening?
Exactly. A pretty famous one
by the name of Roberta Smith. I honestly knew nothing of the art world up until
that point, so I didn’t understand how huge of a thing this was. But this
became the catalyst for me getting all kinds of invitations from people in that
scene.
Sounds like something out of a dream.
Crazy, right? Here I was, a
guy who’d been DJing and playing around, not really sure what his profession
was, and now I suddenly had people from galleries giving me their cards,
saying, “Come by if you’d like to talk.” With the help of my friend Peter, who spoke fluent Japanese and put me up in New York, I picked business
cards for three or four galleries to go meet with. All of the gallerists were
well-groomed, except for the last one, who for some reason wanted to meet on a
street corner. He rolled up on a skateboard in shorts and his hair all long and
bushy and was like, “Let’s go grab a drink!” My instincts told me right away that
he was an interesting dude. It turned out I’d traded contact info with Bill
(Brady) of ATM Gallery. And so I did a group show at ATM Gallery that year, and
then a solo show the following year.