Ivorypress

RB DERO Stam (207.2)
stempelkunst / stamp-art


Stempelkunst – Stampk Art is a foundational work within the Mail Art movement and the visual poetry scene of the 1970s, edited by the Dutch conceptual artist and critic Gerrit Jan de Rook.

The edition was published in Utrecht in 1975 under the exp/press label. Due to its importance as a compendium of artists using rubber stamps, a second edition followed that same year, with an expanded version titled simply Stamp Art released in 1976 by Daylight Press.

It serves as an anthology featuring over a hundred international artists. Notable names include the Mexican artist Ulises Carrión (who collaborated closely with De Rook), Francisco Pino, Robert Filliou, Anna Banana, Endre Tót, and Genesis P-Orridge.

The book documents a period when the rubber stamp transformed from a bureaucratic tool into a poetic and democratic medium, allowing for the fast, cheap reproduction of artistic ideas outside the traditional gallery system.

Although each artist’s contribution is unique, the end result is an artists’ book that crosses borders both conceptually and geographically.

Parts of the book: Box

Sometimes books come inside a box. Or they come with a box that helps gather all their parts together.

The box works like a container. It holds the book, or it holds many loose pieces that belong to the same work.

This is not only for special editions. Boxes can also be simple and practical. They are often used when a publication is made of different elements.

Inside, you might find pages that are not bound, postcards, letters, small booklets, or even notecards and stickers. Each piece can exist on its own, but together they form a whole.

Without a box, these elements could move, mix, or get lost. The box keeps them safe and in order. It gives them a place to live.

At the same time, the box becomes part of the work. It adds weight, texture, and presence. It changes how we open, touch, and explore the piece.

In the end, the box is not just a container. It brings everything together, and turns many separate parts into one complete object.

Cuts, burns, punctures
Ishmael Randall-Weeks
Meier Ramirez, 2016

This artist’s book by Peruvian born, New York and Cusco-based artist Ishmael Randall Weeks provides a meditation on recent Peruvian history.

For his 2013 multimedia installation he created a series of works using found slides from the 1970’s and 1980’s showing private family moments like weddings and vacations. He intervenes on the slides, he punctures, cuts, and draws upon them to destroy or transform the original memories. His interventions range from minimal to extreme, offering his personal response to Peru’s violent political and social history of the 1970’s and 80’s.

By damaging the slides, Weeks creates a metaphor for the political violence and social unrest that ‘scarred’ the country during those decades. The book explores how our collective memory of a place is often fragmented or ‘damaged’ by its past.

The book includes a text by Peruvian writer and curator Rodrigo Quijano as well as 2nd original altered slides.