There are several ways of showing mail art.
The problem I have with giving more space to any art work is that it isolates
individual creations and the individual artist; the network idea and the
togetherness gets lost this way.
Also art becomes nearly religious this way. God is dead but is replaced by
the holy art work of the holy artist, if you know what I mean. This is the way
art is shown in commercial galleries. All is based on focus building. I'm not
in the mail art network for this type of behaviour or "seeing" or "viewing"...
I do not intend to worship art or mail art.
My ideas and practices have been shaped by the Kitoko Jungle Magazine
exhibitions (something I did before mail art). We covered all walls with art
works, with nearly no space between the different art works, the carpeted floor
was painted by a collective of 6 different artists. In order to view the art on
the walls, people had to walk on the carpet, so on the art.
At the end of this exhibition we destroyed the carpet, indicating it is
allright to destroy art.
We even toyed with the idea of dropping the carpet fragments from the Atomium
in Brussels afterwards but that never took place because some artists got
scared because of possible legal repercussions.
The only way to get some peace in this art cavern was to look at the ceiling!
The inspiration of the concept came from how art was shown in certain Russian
museums.
That it is possible to get "lost" in all the togetherness of the art is not a
problem to me.
I like being lost. Don't play it safe, enjoy a bit of chaos if you can,
embrace it if possible.
The inspiration here comes from outsider art or "art brut". The outsider
artist seldom starts or develops focus in his/her art. You can read the art
from every point in the art work. I like this very much. Of course this is
"hell" for academic shaped art and artists.
The mail art display at the St Niklaas festival was like Geert told an
attempt to create a "walking thru' the forest" feeling or even "walking thru' a
water fall"
You can vieuw this on the blog:
http://frioursearthcharter.blogspot.com
Postal greetings,
Guido
Sztuka Fabryka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At the independent arts festival in Belgium a couple of years ago,
Guido
Vermeulen had a fantastic display of mailart. He had several methods of
showing. Primarily he had folding screen-like frames standing along the
gallery with the mailart suspended in plastic page protectors, attatched
together in vertical columns. (they filled the space of where the screens
would be.) This way you could also see both sides, you could walk "through"
the exhibit between the columns of plastic pages. I think he probably built
the wooden frames himself. It was very effective. There were a lot of pieces
in his show, too many to hang. There was also a tablewith 3D pieces on them
and a basket with postcards that anyone could sift through.
>>> What you saw was material from me I gave to Guido as I was absolutely
sure it would be great to have his exhibition in these plastic page
protectors attached to each other with a string in vertical colums. In other
Mail-Art Festivals in the past I did showed Mail-Art also this way. Creating
a forest in a small romm where people could walk through.
Sztuka Fabryka
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