Existing comment:
Leonhard Frank Duch (b. 1940, German)
Mail art to John Held Jr., 1981
Leonhard Frank Duch has been making mail art since 1975 and currently continues his practice in Berlin. Though born in Germany, he lived and worked in Brazil for over forty years (1951–94) and was an important member of the Latin American mail art community. For Duch, mail art was an elusive art form that could be used to protest Brazil's military dictatorship and its censoring of art, as it enabled the circulation of messages whose origins were difficult to track. Here, Duch has stamped emphatic and slightly self-mocking coinages and phrases incorporating his surname, such as "Duchthings," "Duch Post," and "I am Duch, not Duchamp." By further proclaiming "I am an artist / unemployed," he expresses somewhat demeaning aspects of himself as well as his thoughts about the suppression of artistic expression under the dictatorship. Although envelopes are the public face of a letter and tend to be rubberstamped with official bureaucratic statements, Duch instead stamps them with highly personal and subtly subversive messages.
-- Liz Moore |