An art gallery opening is not an event that includes the opening of an art gallery.*
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* This is a purposeful trick to keep the uninitiated baffled. Using familiar English words against their meaning is a tool characteristic of both totalitarianism and artsy pretention alike. Consider:
“I attended a gallery opening last night.”
“Oh? Where’s the new gallery?”
“Tell me, darling: is this innocence of yours confined to the purely visual arts, or do you also clap between movements?”
Instead, an art gallery opening is the launch of a new exhibit within a previously established gallery.**
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** I don’t know what they say when they actually do want to open a brand-new exhibition space for reals, but I would expect the term to be misleading. In art, language is used to obfuscate rather than reveal. Consider:
“What are these seemingly random brush strokes with bits of rubbish glued over them supposed to mean?”
“Let yourself deinculcate; Fluxus escapes the fixity of ‘meaning.”
“Who’s Fluxus?”
“Dada.”
