Mailed to Tjeerd Deelstra
Feedback Pieces (2 March-11 April).
Single sheet exhibition invitation torn into ca. two dozen pieces. Amsterdam: Pieter Brattinga Gallery, 1981.
One of Ulises Carrión’s rarest mail art projects, with the original mailed envelope sent to the collector Tjeerd Deelstra (b. 1937). As the artist intended (explained below), a small torn portion is not present.
“In 1981, when the Print Gallery Pieter Brattinga invited Carrión to exhibit his work there, Carrión thought of a response project in which he instructed participants to reconstruct, in any way they desired, the bottom half of an invitation, which had been shredded. They were then to sign it and mail it back to the gallery. The lower section of the invitation included a definition of mail art, which the artist had torn up and from which he had then removed a small fragment. This way, the definition of mail art could never be reconstructed and the instruction given by the artist was impossible to accomplish. The project resulted in 243 responses in all sorts of formats; not only intervened letters but also objects. By making participants reconstruct the invitation, the project had a cyclical component that was emphasized by having the word ‘feedback’ in its title. In this way, Feedback Pieces takes one step further Carrión’s intentions to reformulate not only the artwork but also the communication system through which it travels.”–Aimé Iglesias Lukin, “King Kong Archives: Ulises Carrión on Mail and Art” in Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster (2019), pp. 11-13 (pictured).
Both the envelope and torn-up invitation are in excellent condition.
❧ Juan J. Agius, ed., Ulises Carrión & The Big Monster (2014), pp. 120-35 (pictured).
Price: $850.00
Item ID: 8076
