Jochen Gerz | Postsachen

 

Jochen Gerz

Postsachen (1968-1972) 

Berlin, Germany: Edition Hundtermark, 1972

33.2 x 25.5 cm.

Edition of 27 signed and dated copies

A collection of between 20 and 42 items (descriptions vary wildly), including postcards, stickers, a collage, a polaroid, a found object and and and a collaboration with Maurizio Nannucci (see previous post, here). Many of the items are individually signed. 

Available from the publisher, here, for 1200 Euro.

"Jochen Gerz’s Postsachen (“Postal Items,” or simply “Mail”) is a collection of roughly twenty printed works that Gerz completed between 1968 and 1972 (fig. 1; fig. 2). While some of the works were expressly designed to be sent through the mail (“Rechtsschebibung,” for example, is in fact a postcard, with the title words printed in large letters on the front and empty spaces on the back for the sender to write a note, append an address, and add a stamp), most of the items were originally constructed for other purposes (such as a two-page statement, entitled “Pour un langage du fair,” which had been written for a symposium on contemporary poetic practices). 

Postsachen was published by Hundertmark editions, a press that began in 1970 with a focus on German and Austrian artists (including, for example, Joseph Beuys, Arnulf Rainer, and Hermann Nitsch) as well as an array of artists associated with Fluxus (such as Ken Friedman, Eric Andersen, Ben Vautier, Ben Patterson, and Philip Corner). Like Postsachen, which was published in an edition of twenty-seven, most Hundertmark boxes were printed in editions of under one hundred, with some as few as five or ten."

- Roger Rothman