Sept 12, 2010
New York City
Elevation: 80m
Back in June, over a little too many glasses of rose, my partner in crime, Kesha Bruce and I decided that we are going to start our own art gallery. We had a clear idea of what our gallery would be, how we would tweek it, reinvent it, modify it from the existing gallery model. We are deep into the business side of the discussion when we realized, we didn’t know what we should call ourselves. All blue chip art galleries take their names after their gallery directors, yet Bruce + Grosso didn’t quiet feel right.
Kesha and I both wanted to be spies when we were young. We share a deep rooted fascination and have watched too many James Bond movies. Somehow over the course of our friendship, we have taken to call each other spy as a term of affection and would occasionally use spy terminology in our exchanges with one another. I decided to google for a list of spy terms randomly and emailed it to Kesha.
As she awaited for her flight back to Paris, France, she looks over the list of spy terms I emailed her and AH HA! Lighting Strikes! Bang and Burn is an cold-war ear espionage term used to describe covert demolition and sabotage operations. We altered the spelling slightly in a tongue and cheek reference to the tradition of naming the art gallery after their well known directors. Hence, Baang + Burne Contemporary was born.
To make this a even better covert operation, during one of our 6am conference calls via skype, I inadvertently called her Kesha Burne, which then would automatically make me Charles Baang…at last, another alias for me. Given how many different names and alias I do actually have, during my moments of delirium, I do wonder if I really am a spy and I just don’t know it.
