Fourteen paintings, two rooms: the Mezcalum office

The Mezcalum office is two rooms of white-painted brick, and for a while it had fourteen of my paintings on it. That's the biggest single hang I've done, and it's the best argument I have for the way I work with venues: I put the paintings up at no cost, they get labelled, and if one sells off the wall the venue takes a share. How that works in detail is here.

What went where

The brick does a lot of the work. Crimson on the white brick; blue by the stairs; a light blue over the desk; green over the leather sofa; white over the bar cart. No. 040, the ten-foot black-and-white diptych, went over the long table. At the bar, the neon does its own thing and the paintings behind it have to hold their own against it.

What happened next

No. 040 came down this year and went to a private home in Tribeca, which is the point: the wall was where it was seen. The photographs and clips from both rooms are on On the wall.

If you have a wall

A restaurant, a bar, a lobby, an office floor. Original work on the walls at no cost, labelled, and changed over when you want something new. You take a share of every sale the wall makes. For venues has the terms; the address is charles.s.black@gmail.com.

About the author. Charles Black is a self-taught painter working in acrylic on canvas from a two-room studio at the back of a warehouse in Queens, New York, and the founder of ABB Collective. He has been posting the work as @abstractbyblack since 2022 and has placed paintings in bars, offices and private homes around New York. Questions about anything here: charles.s.black@gmail.com.