catalogue

Here we proudly present the correspondence work between two of the major alive and unknown Belgian artists: Sjoerd Paridaen and Hans van Heirseele.

For almost 10 years they have grew together an amazing work that now we try to spread all over the world due its interest, its surprising characteristics and its top qualities. Coming from the body of what it is known as Mail Art, this work takes a step beyond anything you have ever seen on the subject until now.

The correspondance began on December 31, 1996.

There were no rules other than the format (a regular postcard format) approx10,5x15 cm.

The mechanics of the work were very simple: one sent the other one a (post) card. The one who received it made an intervention on it and sent it back. Again the one who received it variegated it and sent it. The process continued like that until one decided to keep the card. He didn't have to consult the other one to do so.

After a slow intro, witch took no longer than two weeks, a first acceleration turned it in a daily activity, funny as it was because both correspondents lived in the same street, no more further than a couple of blocks apart. This situation changed when Hans van Heirseele moved to Southern Spain (end 1999).

But the correspondence went on, actually got even more intense.

Its basic code never changed: The cards were send (10 or more a day) and turned back to sender until one of both artist felt pleased with the result.

For a long period Paridaen´s main interventions stuck to the ritual of using tape in all its forms and different sorts of stamps. van Heirseele basically focused on junk material that he found out on the street, gradually incorporating tape as well. Each interaction and/or esthetic novelty became incorporated in the correspondence as a whole, combining different ways of recycling material and adding ideographic impulses, thus in some way creating an inter-twining corpus that became the work of one artist split in two personalities.

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