RICHARD L. FEIGEN & CO. INCORPORATED

34 East 69th Street Tel: (212) 628-0700 New York, New York 10021 Email: info@rlfeigen.com

Please Return To:

Mail Art from the Ray Johnson Archive Opens May 14, 2015

Opening event June 3rd, 5:30 – 7:30pm

In conjunction with “Please Add to and Return to,” a mail art activation presented by Performa in collaboration with the Ray Johnson Estate, Richard L. Feigen and Company presents Please Return To: Mail Art from the Ray Johnson Archive, an exhibition of never-before-exhibited related material. Johnson’s body of work spans many media, and he is well known for his intricate and complex collages. His mail art project, The New York Correspondance [sic] School, utilized the postal system as a means of dissemination, circumventing the commercial art world and inviting others to collaborate. This practice enabled Johnson to “resist both co-optation and commodification, by substituting a gift-based economy based on participation, mutual obligation and ritual procedures.”1 This egalitarian system of creation and distribution effectively reinvented the relationship between the artist/producer and receiver, inspiring a vast international network of artistic exchange and collaboration that exists to this day. Johnson continued to expand his network and devote hours each day to his mailings until his death in 1995. In 1976, Johnson created a “please add to and return to” mailing featuring his own silhouette. Please Return To features original examples of that mailing, which Johnson continued to distribute as late as 1990. Other “please add to and return to” mailings such as “The Starn Twins,” “Philip Guston’s Bat Tub,” “Please Add Hair to Cher,” and “Andy Warhol’s Hand” will be displayed, along with a selection of Johnson’s collages that incorporate references to his mail art practice. Also included in this exhibition are materials from Johnson’s Rimbaud mailing project, which appeared in the November 1971 issue of Arts Magazine. For this project, the artist printed a photocopied image of Arthur Rimbaud in the magazine with instructions to detach the page, alter it, and mail it to his home address. Within the Estate’s archive are nearly 100 responses to that prompt, in some cases with their original envelopes. Throughout the run of the show, these originals, dutifully added to and returned to Johnson, will be rotated with other examples from the rich holdings of the Johnson Estate archive. The exhibition will open May 14 with an opening reception on June 3rd from 5:30 to 7:30pm. Left to right: Anonymous “The Starn Twins” mailing; Rimbaud mailing by Gregory Abbott; Anonymous “Phillip Guston’s Bat Tub” mailing. © The Ray Johnson Estate, Courtesy Richard L. Feigen & Co.

For Press Inquiries, please contact Prentice Cultural Communications rosalind@prenticeart.com or (212) 228-4048.

                                                                                                               1 Gosse, Johanna. “From Art to Experience: The Porous Philosophy of Ray Johnson.” Journal of Black Mountain College Studies 2 (Spring 2012).