Ulises Carrión
b. 1941, San Andrés Tuxtla, Mexico, d.1989, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dear Reader. Don’t Read, 1973
Two hand-printed sheets (black on cream) fixed to grey card, handmade by the artist. Unsigned. 370 x 240 mm.
One of Ulises Carrion’s most important works, exhibited in the Netherlands in 1973. Each work has handwritten text on verso stating ‘U. Carrion, “Dear Reader Don’t Read”’. The work offered here predates the similar diptych piece in the retrospective exhibition at the Reina Sofia, Madrid (which is drawn from a private Paris-based collection and dated 1975). Thus, this work is the earlier of the two known versions. The curators of the Reina Sofia exhibition noted the symbolic importance of this piece to Carrion’s wider oeuvre by not only naming the exhibition ‘Dear Reader Don’t Read’ but by also stating that:
Ulises Carrión’s constant search for new cultural strategies… were determined by two fundamental themes: structure and language…This duality corresponds to the exhibition title Dear reader. Don’t read—taken from his diptych of the same name— which illustrates his ambiguous relation to literature, a recurring theme in his work.
– Reina Sofia, March 2016.
Unlike the version exhibited at the Reina Sofia, which was displayed side-by-side, the verso to Dear Reader is inscribed ‘above’ and Don’t Read ‘below’ (in Dutch). Price and provenance on request.
Tasting Mail, 1981
Seeing Mail, 1981
127 x 91 mm, postcards printed black on yellow stock
Love Stories, 1972
Black felt tip pen on brown paper. Signed and dated by the artist in pencil. 240 x 340 mm.
These works were exhibited in 1972, a year later the publication Conjugation. Love Stories was published in book format using numbered, typewritten pages by Exp/Press, Utrecht, 1973. Price and provenance on request.
Box Clinch: A Sound Performance by Ulises Carrión, 1978
Silkscreen poster printed blue and red on white. 413 x 270 mm.
Produced on the occasion of 'a sound performance by Ulises Carrion' Genève, 10 May, 1978.
sstt!!, 1973
A unique stamp work on paper, in original frame, as framed by the artist. 105 x 74 mm (framed).
One version of the work was exhibited in the ‘Sstt!!’ exhibition at Mijn Galerijtje, Breda, 1973, listed as Carrion’s first solo exhibition in the Dear Reader, Don’t Read Catalogue, Reino Sofia, Madrid, 2016, pp 174-177. This second version of sstt!! has a slightly different moulded frame and was given to the organisers of Agora Studios in the same year. Only two versions are known. A photograph of the work in an installation shot of the exhibition is reproduced in Guy Schraenen, Ulises Carrión: “We have won! Haven’t we?” (Amsterdam: Museum Fodor, 1992), p.10.
Below:
Mirror Box, 1979
Two colour rubber stamp on cream felt, stapled, unpaginated, 185 x 185 mm. Handmade by the artist. First edition. Edition of 100 copies.
Feedback Pieces, Print Gallery, Amsterdam, 1981.
110 x 220mm envelope containing 16 torn pieces of paper. Feedback Pieces is a mail art project in which an invitation card is torn to pieces, with the upper section containing instructions for the reader-recipient still intact. It asks the reader-recipient to ‘put all the pieces back together’, then sign ‘the resulting piece’ before returning it to Print Gallery. ‘Feel free to interpret this instruction any way you like, but it’s essential that you send something back.’ This iteration of the project is addressed by Carrión to Lily van Ginneken, to whom Carrión wrote for the Clues project later the same year, and the postage stamp is dated 5 February 1981.
£750
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