Schwabpost
Mail Art

The exhibition focused on the mail art produced over a good decade (1978–1990) by Werner Schwab (1958, Graz – 1994, Graz) and Janos Erdödy (1909, Budapest – 1996, Szigliget). Over the course of this period, around 200 letters and cards circulated between a wide variety of residential addresses and places of residence. Acting as archaeologists of their everyday lives, both artists found, collected, reused and grouped together headlines, newspaper photographs, cigarette packets and train tickets taken out of context. Viewed in their loop through time and space, the totality of the images comprising the 200 exhibits forms an object that can be read as the protagonists’ personal, artistic and political commentary. Motifs and characteristics of Werner Schwab’s later literary work can already be found in his earlier text-image compositions and image-texts. The (art) categories and techniques traditionally associated with the individual materials thereby lose their defining power.

A collaboration between Kunsthalle Wien, Wiener Festwochen and Neue Galerie Graz.