The image that stayed with me most from this show wasn’t an artwork but a moment from the promotional video I saw on Jeremy’s Instagram profile. Vita pushes out a baby tooth with her tongue. I don’t know why that stuck. Don’t ask me. I also remember Jeremy falling, over and over, in the same video. I’m always impressed by how clearly everything in his artistic image is thought through, yet it all feels so genuine. Every fall, every edit, every word.
And then there was Vita’s text, printed on a large white board in the vitrine. I loved that her grammar was off. It made her words feel more alive and honest than the last hundred think pieces I’ve read about the art market. She had this drive to figure out the rules the art world runs on, and the blunt clarity with which she put them down. She wrote about a critic, the one who decides what’s good or bad, valuable or worthless. She didn’t say it was stupid that a single person can have an impact on an artwork’s value. She just said it like it was. I felt uneasy.
I tried to summon more memories of the exhibition, but my mind did what it often does, slid toward the feed. I caught myself wondering which image from the show would perform best in the carousel on my profile. Definitely not the shopfront photo with just the white poster; you couldn’t read the text.
Maybe a wide shot of the gallery, but then there’d be more space than art. Or a close-up of a single piece? The thing is, on Instagram, it isn’t my opinion that matters. It’s the image I chose. Especially the first one that tells my followers what to think about, not what to think.
I kept remembering the conversations Jeremy and I had about algorithms, surveillance, the Big Bro who’s always there, watching but not liking back. The funny thing is that I already know fewer people will see this post compared to the others with faces, shocking titles, or cats. And yet, this exhibition and Vita’s text matter to me a lot. But does the algorithm care? Does Mark care? Of course not. There’s no intellectual value promoted here. On Instagram, it’s only visual currency. But back to the exhibition…
The gallery itself was hidden above a vintage shop. You had to find your way down narrow stairs that weren’t alcohol-friendly. I felt like I was about to join a secret club. Inside, I moved in circles, trying to catch each work with my camera. At first, I photographed compulsively, as if proof of attendance mattered more than attention. Only once my Photos app looked satisfyingly tiled did I start looking. Actually looking. What an irony, huh? Doing exactly the thing Jeremy and I criticise all the time. But I was fascinated by the collaboration itself: Jeremy and his daughter, the girl who appears in so many of his conversations with Mark. Seeing her images on Instagram added a new layer of understanding to how his life and art blur together, and how they both exist so fully in virtual space.
The show worked so well because of this child’s gaze on art, not in terms of aesthetic or cultural value, but as a perspective on the strange commercial machinery of the art world. A system that often strips away feeling, swollen with money and power. No, no, I take it back. Of course, people buy art because they love it, but the moment we use money to buy the physical object of our longing, something sticky happens. Love becomes material. Vita described a system in which art is no longer about pausing to contemplate the collage on a page, but about pausing to count the money in one’s wallet. I didn’t use the phrase “child’s gaze” to diminish Vita’s artistic value or her way of seeing. Quite the opposite. Though she’s nine, her collaboration with her father managed to distil the entire commercial art system into a single short text. I envied her for that. For her, everything was either black or white. Or it was a question.
Someone either valued art for what it is or for how much its price might rise in a few years. Her text was a clear demonstration of how the art world operates.
Next to the shop’s entrace, there were several thick copies of Jeremy’s CV stacked by the exit. Genuinely thick. I wondered whether it was intentional, but it struck me as such a sharp contrast to Vita, who has only just begun as an artist. Ah, I did it again. I called her an artist, as if that title were mine to give, as if I had the authority to decide who she is. Maybe she doesn’t want to be an artist at all. Maybe through this text and this collaboration with her father, she’s saying she wants nothing to do with that world.
While writing this text, I’m aware of every word I type. I feel as if Vita is watching my fingers on the keyboard and judging me. Suddenly, a whole series of memes with disapproving faces floods my head. It’s like she’s saying: write what you like, post whatever photos you like. You’re the critic. You’ll decide whether what I made is good or bad. I can feel a bead of sweat roll down my brow because I’m terrified of answering wrong and disappointing her.
She finishes her text: “If a artist dies then there work gets more ecspencive. But not every one so dont get your hopes up. And sumtimes nobody notasis your dead.” Jesus Christ. She’s serious business. I haven’t even met her in real life, and I already know she’d eat me alive.
A week ago, when I visited this show, Vita got into my head, and she won’t come out. She’s still there, somewhere between my drafts and my camera roll, judging my composition choices.