Exhibition visible at the Galerie Eva Vautier from 22 April 2016 Mail Art: starting from a strong need to communicate with others, in the 1960s Ben decided to…
Exhibition visible at the Galerie Eva Vautier from 22 April 2016 Mail Art: starting from a strong need to communicate with others, in the 1960s Ben decided to write postcards to institutions, to other artists and to his friends. In these letters, theory, poetry, appropriations and megalomania intermingle. The artistic action consisted in keeping up a correspondence, a practice giving rise to exchanges in which total freedom of creation is proclaimed. In every case the playful side of Mail Art is clearly perceptible: colourful winks at the correspondents, use of personal stamps and “off-the-scale” marks, the surprise for the final recipient of discovering an extraordinary “letter”. “Mail Art is important because, without Mail Art, there would never have been Dada, Surrealism or Fluxus. All these movements and others begin and pass through communication, often by post. We send each other ideas and write them down. And then there are those artists who create almost only through the Post and Mail Art: Ray Johnson, Jean Toche, René Duran, Orimoto, Prolix..” Ben Vautier Exhibition on the first floor, Ben’s guest: Patrick Lanneau Encountering the painting of Patrick Lanneau is a journey through colour. Painter, draughtsman and video artist, he is a complete artist. The stridency of the colours, the schematisation of forms and the handling of painterly matter evoke a dreamlike universe in weightlessness. Patrick Lanneau then devotes himself mainly to landscape, which becomes ever more evasive.
