calendario eventi  :: 

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9/1/2015

Two exhibitions

Chert, Berlin

Home Archives
Paulo Bruscky, mail art from Robert Rehfeldt’s home archive

curated by Zanna Gilbert and David Horvitz

‘HOME ARCHIVES: Paulo Bruscky & Robert Rehfeldt’s Mail Art Exchanges from East Berlin to South America’ is co-curated by Zanna Gilbert (postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Drawings & Prints at MoMA, New York) and artist David Horvitz. This exhibitionshows the private archives of the correspondence of Paulo Bruscky (Brazil, 1949) and Robert Rehfeldt (Germany, 1931–1993), bringing together their embellished letters and art works sent over a period of around ten years, from 1975 onwards.

Throughout the 1970s, mail art connected hundreds of artists around the world, creating a networked community of exchange, and in some cases, political resistance. Chert is delighted to present an exhibition of the correspondence of Paulo Bruscky (BR, 1949) and Robert Rehfeldt (DE, 1931–1993), bringing together their embellished letters and art works sent over a period of around ten years, from 1975 onwards. These works allow an in-depth look at how two artists who felt a strong affi nity with one another, but had never met, developed an enduring conversation and friendship.

During the 1970s, Bruscky and Rehfeldt maintained an intimate dialogue through their correspondence. While they met face-to-face only in 1982 when Bruscky travelled to Germany, the works they exchanged were gestures of intimacy that shared their experiences and ideas, rooted in their home cities of Recife and East Berlin. Although the artists’ practices and viewpoints could be considered similar, Bruscky was viewed as a communist in military-ruled Brazil, while Rehfeldt’s artistic activities were deemed suspicious enough to be monitored by the Stasi in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

The artists’ correspondence frequently touched upon state surveillance and issues of artistic liberty, including the arbitrary demands of the ideology of the nation state on its citizens. Rehfeldt’s phrase ‘CONTART’, a contraction of the words ‘contact’ and ‘art’, was an attempt to defy nationalist sentiments by uniting ‘art workers’ across borders through the principle of contact. While both artists re flected on their given local contexts incessantly, they also sent works that challenged, critiqued, and aimed to transcend the nation state.

Mail art creates personal archives that exist in artists’ homes around the world. This exhibition shows not just two artists’ works, but two private archives amassed by incidental custodians. The works exhibited here are from these personal archives in two distinct places: it’s not just about the work, but about where the work ends up. Rehfeldt’s mailings to Bruscky currently sit in Bruscky’s studio in Recife, Brazil, while Bruscky’s mailings to Rehfeldt are archived in a box in the home of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt in Berlin.

These pieces will also be collected into a publication, which will reconstruct the artists’ exchanges

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Ruth-Wolf Rehfeldt “Regenschauer” 1978, Typewriting

In the upper room Chert will present ‘SIGNS FICTION,’ a solo exhibition by Ruth-Wolf Rehfeldt, Robert Rehfeldt’s wife. Historical works by the Berlin artist have been selected and arranged to offer an overview of her production, focusing especially on her involvement in the Mail Art movement. The table displays show a wide selection of her “postcard” pieces, produced in mailablesize.

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt began to write poems, draw and make collages in the early 1970s. Her first typewriter works, which she entitled “Typewritings” and whose diversity defies description, were produced on an Erika typewriter. With impressive precision, she arranged letters and punctuation marks into pictorial elements, often creating a three-dimensional effect. The humour and finesse of her work made Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt a sought-after contact person in the network of international artistic exchanges.
Born in 1932 in Wurzen, Saxony, she is one of the few women artists from the former GDR to address in depth the relationship between text and image. Through their involvement in the Mail Art network, she and her husband Robert Rehfeldt were able to surmount the ban on exhibitions and publications by alternative artists during the GDR period. Her artistic activity came to an end with the unification of Germany in 1989.
Each of her works consists of an original - either an individual typed work or a series - and of further reproductions in the form of carbon copies, postcards or prints in formats ranging from A5 to A2. These works can just as easily be situated within the context of conceptual art or visual and concrete poetry as they can in the domain of Mail Art.

(Text extract from “Ruth-Wolf Rehfeldt, Original graphic works 1972-1989” the first major exhibition of her poetic and visual “Typewritings”, The Stiftung Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen 2012)

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt was born in Wurzen in 1932. In 1950 she moved to Berlin — where she still lives today— studying at the workers’ and farmers’ faculty in 1951. In 1954 she met Robert Rehfeldt, they married one year later. She was employed by the department for exhibitions at the Academy of Arts and made drawings in her spare time. At the start of the 1970s she started to develop her typical typewriter graphics (Typewritings) and participated in the Mail Art projects. She became member of the Association of Fine Artists of the GDR in 1978.

Image: Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Regenschauer, 1978, Typewriting

Press contact: Clarissa Tempestini T. +49 (0) 30 75442118/9 F +49 (0) 30 75442120 press@chert-berlin.com

Opening Saturday 10th Janaury, 2015 from 7 pm

Chert
Skalitzerstrasse 68 10997 Berlin
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 12.00 to 6.00 pm

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