Mail art or the transparency of the image

By Carlos A. Lanza

Curator

In the article that I wrote for the catalog that announced the first sample of mail art in Honduras, I said that the great merit of Jorge Restrepo “lies in his decision to introduce a new artistic genre into the country.” At that point the contribution was on a historic plane; that is, documenting that the history of mail art in the country began with him. Now there is a need to introduce a new element that closes the whole process: the installation with which he structured the show was esthetically and programmatically right.

Esthetically correct because placing the images in hanging plastic strips not only gave them a strong communicative power by making it possible to explore both the obverse and the reverse of the pieces, but also empowered their visual discourse by having them gravitate in space, creating an atmosphere, a set of really poetic transparencies. The foregoing resolution made it possible to evoke the sense of correspondence to which all mail art alludes: images that come and go; messages that stop in one place, only to go on to another, but always in search of a final destination, which are delivered and received with the soul bare, open, transparent, not hiding anything. All the foregoing meanings are born of the rightness of that great setup, where Restrepo also interpreted the space intelligently. The Spanish Cultural Center in itself is a temple to transparency. There is no other building in the country that houses such natural light in its rooms; and this fact contributed a great deal to the museum/3concept of the artist.

As for the programmatic correctness, Restrepo is an artist with a clear awareness of the trade and his function as an artist: intuitive in the execution of his works, but very programmatic and rational in the conception of the same. This point is reached when an artist has a well-defined judgment of art. He/she can have good or bad works; but what an artist is not pardoned is being unaware of the meaning and social purpose of his/her work.

Going back to the setup, I would like to emphasize that the format of the works?the majority the size of a postcard?helped create a sense of diversity, of communion of languages that Restrepo multiplies even further by making the images transparent through the use of the transparent banners. Upon viewing the installation from the frontal plane, we have a tridimensional perception of the space. Everything is fused yet everything is spread as if the images were particles, which upon gravitating express all the energy of the space: correspondence of form and spirit. This act of corresponding becomes more interactive when we decide to penetrate and explore the universe of images that the show offers us. The organization arranged by the artist activates all the senses and sets the stage for all emotions, thanks to the encircling nature of the show and above all, for that unfolding, which like a mirror re-defines the dimensions of how we look and accentuates the contrasts. The installation is a sheet of light that modifies the perception of the works, just as if it were in an observatory in which we discover the sensitive world that the participating artists propose to us.

Translucent, crystalline space, a walk among transparencies, a landscape of reflections that on baring the works palpitates the invisible: the artist’s soul. The installation is the axis that articulates the works; these are attracted by a force of gravity that functions by means of a tension that substitutes the relations of hierarchy for relations of correspondence. In that sense, the luminosity of the installation is a formal resource that dissolves the different planes of the penetrable in a splendor that projects the pieces with a harmony sustained on the basis of equivalent visual impacts.

In this show transparency also has a moral significance: Faced with a world that fills the soul with darkness, covering the consciousness of those who direct the destinies of humanity with an evil scab, art is a window of light, a multiplying mirror of hopes, a detergent against the impurities of the spirit, a corrosive that removes the dirt of injustice, and a powerful diluent for those that have a carapace of petroleum in their hearts.

The room is organized in three ‘moments’: one of them is arranged in homage to Ryosuke Cohen, one of the paradigmatic artists of mail art. In another we find Shuzo Azuchi Gulliver in a collaborative work with Restrepo, called Tree of notes, and in that same space, we find the series of ten works called Black moons, which are a revelation of the graphic quality of Jorge Restrepo and which were prepared as part of the correspondence that the artist will send to his participating colleagues. We cannot leave out the participation of the Austrian Carola Unterberger, who sent an exquisite piece of net art. The use of the three rooms of the Spanish Cultural Center leads us to perceive the space as a large post office.

The show organized by Jorge Restrepo has, in general terms, covered the principles on which the culture of mail art have been built as an artistic expression. The international projects have been formed around convocations carried out by the same artists or by institutions in charge of promoting this genre, but always under the auspices of a mail artist who backs the project. On this occasion, Restrepo opened up a massive convocation during the month of October 2007 with the theme Merry Christmas for the mail-art artists of the world. The response did not take long; at the time of writing this article, 160 artists have participated, representing 36 countries with more than 200 works. These data are not only an indicator of the success of the event; but at the same time, of the importance that a convocation of this type takes on for an artist. Mail artists are absolutely serious about the convocation as they recognize that their practice is supported and has prestige on an international scale. The proof of this is that mail-art congresses have already been held, and books have been published that record the different approaches that artists and theoreticians have given to the genre.

The theme?Merry Christmas?around which Jorge Restrepo made the convocation, was dealt with in different ways. Some addressed it critically, emphasizing messages that allude to a false happiness in a world crossed by social injustice and wars; others focused the theme according to the religious tradition. Others centered their proposals on the fetishism of the merchandise and the idiotizing consumption that Christmas generates. Then there were the artists that focused on the ludic expression of the subject, while others did not stick to the theme and sent whatever they found convenient. In mail art the theme is no more than a justification for holding a show; there is no need for a thematic unit or a unit of criterion. The artist, in sending in his/her work, is already a participant of a beautiful, fraternal and encouraging gesture as is the gesture of giving. The act of giving is free, not conditioned; therefore not for sale; on the contrary, it is corresponded. In the act of corresponding, Restrepo has four commitments: (1) exhibit everything that arrives (the principles of mail art do not admit discussion about the quality or of the work per se; the quality is in giving); (2) send a work from his mail art production; this time he will send each participant a piece of the project Black moons; (3) send a catalog of the works to all the correspondents; and (4) just as I pointed out earlier, not sell absolutely anything. Not commercializing anything gives him the right to be the owner of all the work that arrived.

In four months, Restrepo went from being one of the artists with more international contacts, to having the most varied collection of art. This leads us to think that mail art goes beyond the correspondence itself; it is moreover an open structure that unites the artists in brotherhood by democratizing their ways of doing art and redefining its social function via far more dynamic and diverse forms of communication. Mail art is an alternative to the commoner ways of producing, promoting and circulating artwork. As John Held points out, “Art is being developed as a guide for transferring information, and the artists seek new ways to communicate the experience of art.” Honduras has gone on to form the international network of mail art. The installation is one of the more original mountings that has been done and helps understand the richness of the expression of this movement. The transparency of the image that Restrepo offers us is a visual exercise that reveals the codes of an art that travels happily to show itself in its constant esthetic and ethical renovation. It is a venture for union and solidarity among artists in a world characterized by the most atrocious sectarianism. The transparency is that which the look undresses in order to be able to see itself in the consciousness of the other.

Tegucigalpa, 19 December 2007

Translated by Gertrude Brekelbaum, PhD


 

Go to the Honduran project 2007