Come & See

Come & See is a gallery on the passage du Grand Cerf, right in the centre of swank Paris. The upstairs is a gallery at least. In the basement they have an office where they are on the phone all the time to the middle east talking about movements in oil prices and positions of different tankers. They smoke a lot down there, and even the upstairs was pretty yellow when we went in to begin with. ‘Can we make these walls a little whiter - I mean, Emmanuel, the artists aren’t going to much like showing against a lung-coloured wall.’

‘Sure, you can paint the walls,’ said Emmanuel, and clambered back downstairs, like a toad.

The gallery was clearly a front, but it was a fancy location, and they gave it to us for nothing (happy I think to be able to present a little activity — there was dust on the frames of the previous show). We mounted an exhibition of artists involved in the 03 issue of the magazine, and for the opening night closed off the passage and used the whole space for our vernissage. Chad brought us free sushi from the restaurant where he was chefing. We had projections from IAT and Cartesian Lover on a huge billowing screen suspended from the nineteenth century ironwork. Pia — who’d been our initial contact with the gallery, drew together her most exclusive charms for the guest list. It was all very beautiful — very “professional art world”.

It was as though everybody there were wearing dark glasses with a false nose and moustache attached.