I know some artist who are very excited, when they get the chance of hav­ing a solo or a group show in a gallery. Hurray!

You guess, {ths} is mostly NOT very excited about. Ohh, don’t get that wrong, there are great moments when you have a show. You know: the free beer at the open­ing, see­ing your work on the wall, speak­ing with the audi­ence, or the best thing: watch­ing peo­ple look­ing at the art­works and find­ing all the lit­tle dis­gust­ing things in it, and may I remind you of the won­der­ful moment, when the gallery owner offer you his couch for sleep­ing? Really great moments!

But yes, it also means a lot of arrange­ment, damn much work with the ship­ping of your art­works, strug­gling with strange gallery behav­ior and such. If you are not in the posi­tion of hav­ing some drug filled up entourage work­ing for you and man­age every­thing, you are in a some­what stress­ful position.

Any­way, the best thing at all is, when you travel to another coun­try to present your work. That can mean a lot to an artist. Peo­ple often ask, if {ths} could show his work in their coun­try. So, how it is pos­si­ble to dis­play the art­works to a lot of peo­ple, in dif­fer­ent coun­tries as gallery space (with­out using the web­site as gallery space) and with­out the has­sle of argu­ing with gal­leries? (It’s really argu­ing, because art is a damn busi­ness, you know.)

The goal was to have a solo show in dif­fer­ent cities all over the world, at the same time. Sure, you can’t be at the same time on dif­fer­ent places in the world, only if you have a clone army of your­self. But it isn’t impor­tant to be there, it is impor­tant that peo­ple can see the art­works.
The process of show­ing art­works in gal­leries is mostly just some­thing that has noth­ing to do with the art­works itself. You man­u­fac­ture a prod­uct, a super­mar­ket tries to sell it (change “prod­uct” with “art­work” and “super­mar­ket” with “gallery” here). Some­times art­works are cre­ated exclu­sively for a show, but again, “show­ing” is not art, it’s business.

Why not using the world as gallery, plac­ing art­works in coun­tries instead inside galleries?

GOODNIGHT TRAVEL WELL: the show itself is the artwork

{ths} asked peo­ple in dif­fer­ent coun­tries to be part of the project. As part of the art itself, those who accepted where “elected” to be cura­tors. Nice peo­ple I never met in per­son. Every cura­tor got an art­work from {ths}, send by mail (real mail, remem­ber?). Some where lost, some hit the ground.

Typ­i­cally art is dis­played inside gal­leries or in the streets (this is called “street art”). As much as I like the white walls of a gallery, I don’t like the lim­ited space, the com­mer­cial feel­ing inside those cold rooms. My idea of hav­ing a show in – for exam­ple– Tokyo is to have a show some­where inside Tokyo, not in a gallery, not in a pre­de­fined space that was made for show­ing art.

As part of the project the cura­tors had to pick a loca­tion in their county, plac­ing the art­work and take a photo of it. They could leave the art­work at place for other peo­ple to watch or just sell it, burn it, take it, whatever.

Those peo­ple aren’t gallery own­ers. The don’t have the expe­ri­ence pre­sent­ing art to peo­ple. So, the places they chose where more or less spe­cial. Some where selected dur­ing lunch, some where selected while shop­ping in a super­mar­ket, some where selected to show the beauty of their coun­try, some because they were located on a route from home to their work­place. Every­thing was pos­si­ble and I had no con­trol about the selec­tion.
In the spirit of my art, that was exactly what I was look­ing for. Things that hap­pen ran­domly or with­out your con­trol and you have to deal with it. Won­der­ful shit.

Oh yeah, we need to be con­form with the main­stream, and so those places where called “Gallery”. Ever heard of the “Gallery Waiana­panapa” in Hawaii or the “Gallery Nia­gara Fall ” in Canada? No? Because they just exist for a short moment in time. Just between the place­ment of the art­work and the cre­at­ing of a photograph.

Have the art­works and the short moment of the show avail­able for every­one, pho­tos from the gallery places where pub­lished into Google Maps. This is prob­a­bly the by far biggest exhi­bi­tion or let’s say that you need to travel a whole day to see another art­work of the show in real life.

The show took place at 14 dif­fer­ent loca­tions: France, Canada, Japan, Nether­lands, Greece, Aus­tralia, USA (Hawaii and Los Ange­les), Rus­sia, Nor­way, Brazil, Argentina, China and Turkey. 3 addi­tional art­works got some­how lost or never arrived their des­ti­na­tion: UK (Lon­don), Chile (Val­paraiso) and USA (New York City). Good­night travel well.

View GOODNIGHT TRAVEL WELL sta­tions on Google map

The art­works

All art­works are mixed media/collage on paper, Dimen­sions: ca. 105 x 148 / 148 x 148 mm

TO LIFE
France, Paris
Gallery Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou
Cura­tor: Math­ieu Puyau

HOT LUNCH
Canada
Gallery Nia­gara Falls
Cura­tor: Jarek Mcjwsk
There are also two addi­tional pho­tos. First one is in the CN Tower, approx. 446.5 m high. Sec­ond one is in the Air Canada Cen­tre dur­ing a game between Rap­tors vs. Celtics. Don’t know which team won. Two events on one place, won­der­ful!

FOUNTAIN OF LOVE
Japan, Tokyo
Gallery Senso-ji tem­ple
Cura­tor: Hosoo Fumi­hiko
I was told that each of the signs in the photo has a dif­fer­ent pur­pose. Some are for good health, some for a happy mar­riage or traf­fic safety. The most pop­u­lar one is for suc­cess in an entrance exam­i­na­tion. So, FOUNTAIN OF LOVE fits great into the sur­round­ings.

MA-A-A-AN
The Nether­lands, Ams­ter­dam
Gallery Red Light Dis­trict
Cura­tor: Tom Lawrence

ROCKET
Greece, Athens
Gallery Filopap­pou Hill
Cura­tor: Tind

LOVE GOD
Aus­tralia, Mel­bourne, Vic­to­ria
Gallery Luna Park
Cura­tor: Ben John Smith

BLITZ
USA, Hawaii, Maui
Gallery Waiana­panapa
Cura­tor: Christo­pher Raykovich
I couldn’t resist to show two addi­tional pho­tos of other Gallery places on Maui. One is the art­work some­where in a restau­rant dur­ing lunch (it’s up to you to find the art­work in the photo) and the other one is a good exam­ple on how to sneak the art­work into a local gallery. Full of nice art­works from local artist, ha! You see, BLITZ is sold out! This should be a trend. I invite every­one to place his own art­work into a gallery. Just leave it there and con­fuse the owner. “If you can’t con­vince them, con­fuse them.”

MATILDA! …DON’T
USA, Los Ange­les
Gallery S Durango Ave
Cura­tor: Jeremy Gold­berg
I was told that there’s is an In N Out burger at that place, a famous burger chain in Los Ange­les. No place could be bet­ter for a show!

NO SOUL
Rus­sia, Moscow
Gallery Red Square
Cura­tor: Vas Pro­belov
This one is very excit­ing. First, the exhi­bi­tion took place dur­ing the russ­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in march 2012, so we have a lot of army vehi­cles here at the Red Square. The fact that the art­work was flipped (we see the back side here, with the Ger­man words: “Mein kleiner Bag­ger” / “My small dig­ger”) and that the actual art­work looks towards the Moscow Krem­lin is very excit­ing and argue some irony. Espe­cially if you have in mind, that we have Elvis on the front.

THE LOST
Nor­way, Oslo
Gallery Vige­landsparken
Cura­tor: Bard Hole Stan­dal

FAILURE LESS
Brazil, Sao Paulo
Gallery Juquehy
Cura­tor: Eduardu Bel­lotto

SO ADULT ONE ‘X’ ISN’T ENOUGH
Argentina, Santa Fe, Rosario
Gallery Par­que de España
Cura­tor: Sil­via Armen­tano

7-DAY TRIAL
China, Bei­jing
Gallery Tianan­men Square
Cura­tor: Fabio Thile
In the photo we see Chao hold­ing the art­work. Thanks Chao.

PART MAN-PART ELEMENTAL FURY!
Turkey, İstan­bul
Gallery Karaköy
Cura­tor: Mehmet Gemal­maz
Pho­tog­ra­phy: Ezgi Özgül
First photo is from Gallery Karaköy, the oth­ers were made at dif­fer­ent places.

BANG!
UK, Lon­don
This art­work reached Lon­don but is miss­ing in action.

IT’S EASY! IT’S FUN!
Chile, Valparaíso/Santiago
This art­work is lost and never reached it’s des­ti­na­tion. Where are you?

ALL NEW SHOCK!
USA, New York City
This art­work is lost.

Pho­tos: by the Curators