ISLAA
Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster
On Now:
Nov 18, 2019 → Mar 14, 2020
11.18.19 → 03.14.20
ARTISTS
Ulises Carrión
CURATORS
Aimé Iglesias Lukin
ART MOVEMENTS
Mail art

Ulises Carrión (1941–1989) was a pioneering figure in mail art, a movement and a medium that produced a unique international network of creative exchange in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout his life, he developed an important oeuvre that spanned performance, video art, and books. Above all, Carrión was a cultural agitator and a social mediator. His ability to build networks was reflected not only in his prominent role in the mail art movement but also through Other Books and So, a gathering space he founded and ran in Amsterdam. His influential essay “Mail Art and the Big Monster” delineates the principles and goals of mail art, charts its evolution, and classifies it according to its formal characteristics and modes of circulation. More radically, Carrión argues that due to its reliance on the distribution network of the postal service, mail art “knocks at the doors of the castle where the Big Monster lives.” Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, director and chief curator of visual arts at Americas Society, brings together a selection of mail art projects that Carrión developed between 1973 and 1983, erasing the boundaries between artwork, archive, and document, while questioning fundamental notions of modern art. Carrión’s interventions allow us to rethink the status of the autonomous work of art and the commercial and bureaucratic systems under which it circulates, as well as the role of authorship and property in contemporary culture.

The exhibition is accompanied by the original publication Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, a richly illustrated booklet that includes essays by Aimé Iglesias Lukin and Zanna Gilbert covering the genesis and main projects of Carrión’s visionary, monumental work.

Installation Views

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster exhibition showing envelopes, photographs, and various objects mounted to the gallery walls.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster exhibition showing envelopes, photographs, and various objects mounted to the gallery walls.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster exhibition showing a large amount of wall-mounted works.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Installation view of Ulises Carrión exhibition showing small collages of varying size, photographs, and sketches mounted to a white wall.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Installation view of Ulises Carrión exhibition showing small collages of varying size, envelopes, photographs, and sketches mounted in a grid to a wall.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Close up view of a powder compact and rolled up paper positioned on a clear, wall-mounted shelf.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

A grid of tan notebook paper with black and white photographs attached to each page with a paper clip.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Installation view of Ulises Carrión exhibition showing small collages of varying size and photographs mounted to a white wall.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Close up view of a dust pan and a red brush with paper and various small objects in the pan.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

Installation view of Ulises Carrión exhibition showing a green tote bag mounted to a wall surrounded by photographs, sketches, and envelopes.

Installation view of Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2019. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ulises Carrión

Ulises Carrión (b. 1941, Mexico; d. 1989, Netherlands) was a pioneering figure in mail art, a movement and a medium that produced a unique international network of creative exchange in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout his life he developed an important oeuvre that spanned performance, video art, and books.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Aimé Iglesias Lukin

Aimé Iglesias Lukin is the director and chief curator of visual arts at Americas Society in New York. Born in Buenos Aires, she received her PhD in art history from Rutgers University with a dissertation titled “This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York 1965–1975,” which she presented as a two-part exhibition and a book at Americas Society in 2021 and 2022. She completed her MA at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and her undergraduate studies in art history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Iglesias Lukin received the ICAA Peter C. Marzio Award from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and grants from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has curated exhibitions independently in museums and cultural centers and previously worked in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York; and Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires.

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) supports the study and visibility of Latin American art.
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The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) supports the study and visibility of Latin American art.

Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
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