Artists Go Home
2020
ART NOW IS THE MIRROR OF YOUR SOCIETY, Robert Rehfeldt, 1979.
Artists Go Home was an open-call during the global lockdowns in 2020 for artists to respond to the works of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (1932-2024). This call was inspired by the original Mail Art Movement, in which Wolf-Rehfeldt was an influential voice. (See Wolf-Rehfeldt’s biography here).
Mail Art was a powerful communicative tool in the 1960s, 70s 80s, and 90s and brought together thousands of artists from all over the globe, most of whom never met in person. It was a subversive movement that overcame dictatorships, isolation, state control, economical constrictions, and physical barriers, and that became a worldwide network of solidarity and exchange. Drawing on this legacy, ChertLüdde reactivated a network of artistic activity through the Artists Go Home project, aiming to borrow from this spirit of free communication without borders and hoping to provide some means of connection and innovation at a time of isolation.
We developed the idea for Artists Go Home while the interruption of mobility and freedom in daily life that came with forced isolation pushed us to reconsider the ways in which we stay connected and how we produce content around the subject of our cultural environment. The context of the global lockdowns compelled us to look backwards for inspiration and work towards reinventing our future.
This is not nostalgia or reiteration, but rather a reflection on the velocity of the art world as we knew it, which became consumed by the speed of production and development and did not allow for deserved attention on certain content.
Upon these reflections we decided to dedicate the solitary time during the lockdowns to rethinking the history and meanings of the Mail Art Network, focusing specifically on the Mail Art Archive of Robert Rehfeldt and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt.
ChertLüdde had collaborated with Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt to create a long-term and ambitious project, the Mail Art Archive of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Robert Rehfeldt, to exhibit the works of the mail art movement. (Information about the mail art archive is available to view on our website here.)
Several exhibitions showcasing material from the archive and two in-depth publications have been produced, including an alphabetic presentation of all mail art received by senders with surnames starting with the letters A and B. (View images of these exhibitions here).
In the early 1970s Robert Rehfeldt coined the word CONTART, which he defined at the time as “living in your mailbox.” This concept and many other texts and mottos used by Rehfeldt, which circulated widely through his ideological text-based works for more than twenty years, helped us reflect on the actual situation we experienced during the Covid lockdowns and the sense of community it demanded.
In 1987, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt initiated a project called Mail Art Collaborations. Upon invitation by Guttorm Nordo to take part in a Mail Art exhibition in Norway and following a practice well-known and diffused within the network (initiated by Ray Johnson’s collaborative Mail Art Projects), Wolf-Rehfeldt sent her postcards to a number of fellow artists and asked them to intervene upon her artwork. The resulting series, comprised of 51 postcard works, is a powerful testimony to the spirit of collaboration and interaction. (Images of these correspondences available here.)
Following the legacy of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Robert Rehfeldt, ChertLüdde sent selected artworks by Ruth to our personal network and invited other artists to intervene with their own messages.
The collaborative works were shared through ChertLüdde’s communication channels, following an organic process of feedback and experimentation, and have been collected into this online exhibition.
(…) Robert Rehfeldt together with Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, developed the idea of “contact culture,” and the pair became central gures in the global mail artists’ network, thus overcoming the relative cultural isolation of the GDR in the late socialist period. Robert Rehfeldt’s motto “Your ideas help my ideas,” printed in the graphic pieces that circulated beyond the Cold War information blockade, became the principle powering his “art letters.” (…)
Klara Kemp-Welch and Cristina Freire in Artists’ Networks in Latin America and Eastern Europe
Sebastian Acker, Artgegenwart, 2020; Video
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukunftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Sebastian Acker.
Ilaria Biotti, I Forgot How To Travel In Space, But I Can Travel In Time, 2020; Digital Image
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, 1975, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Ilaria Biotti
Sarah Boulton, Sarah Boulton For Artists Go Home, 2020; Half-Pearls On Inkjet Home Print Out, A4
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukunftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Sarah Boulton
Sarah Boulton, Advert, 2020; Permanent Marker On Inkjet Home Print Out, A4
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukunftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Sarah Boulton
Viktor Dallman, It’s Impossible To Photograph A Moebius Strip (I), 2020; Photographs Of Negative Film
A collaboration with Vergangen, Gegenwärtig, Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Viktor Dallmann
Viktor Dallman, It’s Impossible To Photograph A Moebius Strip (II), 2020; Photographs Of Negative Film
A collaboration with Vergangen, Gegenwärtig, Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Viktor Dallmann
Liz Dawson, Tower, Spire, 2020; Pencil On Paper; 25 x 31.5 cm
A collaboration with Waiting in Vain, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Liz Dawson
Mikael Gregorsky, Pillars (nb, 1), 2020, Digital Image
A collaboration with Waiting in Vain, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Mikael Gregorsky
In his pieces for Artists Go Home, Gregorsky played with Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt’s original strategy, using language to create visual art. While Wolf-Rehfeldt worked with latin letters, Gregorsky created his pieces with a different language, a coding language. He opened up the images of Wolf-Rehfeldt’s pieces using a text editor to access the ‘code’ of the image, then input the symbol ‘Ω’ in various sections of the ‘code,’ creating the lines that make these images distinct.
Mikael Gregorsky, Pillars (nb, 2), 2020, Digital Image
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Mikael Gregorsky
Mikael Gregorsky, Pillars (nb, 3), 2020, Digital Image
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Mikael Gregorsky
IOCOSE, Still of Moving ‘Waiting In Vain’ Forward, 2020; 3D Animation, Infinite Loop
A collaboration with Waiting in Vain by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and IOCOSE
In this work, IOCOSE moves the work Waiting in Vain by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt forward. This piece is part of a larger series of works in which IOCOSE moves the world forward, one object at a time.
Jonas Kasper Jensen, Pleasure Of All Things New, 2020; 3 Frame Gif Animation; 1560 x 2000 pixels
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Jonas Kasper Jensen
Joe Bun Keo, Thursday, 2020; Modified JPEG; 1794 x 2494 pixels
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Joe Bun Keo
Joe Bun Keo, Franklin, 2020; Modified JPEG; 1712 x 2486 pixels
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Joe Bun Keo
Joe Bun Keo, Carly, 2020; Modified JPEG; 2463 x 3462 pixels
A collaboration with Waiting in Vain, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Joe Bun Keo
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #1, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Waiting In Vain by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #2, 2020; Collage On Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Waiting In Vain by ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #3, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #4, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #5, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Waiting in Vain by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #6, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #7, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Simon Moretti, Untitled (The Distant Mountains Are Reflected In The Eye Of The Dragonfly) #8, 2020; Collage on Inject Print; 29.7 x 21 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Simon Moretti
Louise Rosendal, Ride or Die, 2020; Print On Fabric; 128 x 128 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Louise Rosendal
The images of Rosendal’s works are taken at locations that match the visual content of the prints.
Louise Rosendal, Come Alive, 2020; Print On Fabric; 128 x 128 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukünftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Louise Rosendal
Ben Sleeuwenhoek, Untitled, 2020; Print On Paper; 30 x 20 cm
A collaboration with Vergangen Gegenwärtig Zukunftig, by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Ben Sleeuwenhoek