Funny Face – An international mail art project… 2017 by John Gayer

An international mail art project…

Published electronically 31 October 2017 by John Gayer, Helsinki, Finland

--Afterimgae≈Afterword compiled by publisher.

--Copyright of the artworks held by the artists. Copyright of self portraits, surrogate portraits and publication’s design held by John Gayer

ISBN 978-952-93-9640-5

Table of Contents

Participants’ List ---

Artists’ Works ---

Afterimage≈Afterword ---

Acknowledgements & Further References

Participants’ List Leonor Alicia Arnao, Argentina / Ismail Akyildiz, Turkey Arno Arts, The Netherlands / Mustafa Cevat Atalay, Turkey / Gulsen Aydemir, Turkey Burcin Aydin, Turkey / Walter Bachman, Germany / Sabela Baña, Spain Tiziana Baracchi, Italy / Marita Bauer, Germany / Lutz Beeke, Germany Annette Behlau, Germany / Pedro Bericat, Spain / Marzia Maria Braglia, Italy Fernando Calhau, Brazil / Melih Can, Turkey / Guido Capuano, Italy Antonia Mayol Castelló, Spain / Atrayee Chattopadhyay, United Arab Emirates Ryosuke Cohen, Japan / Jimmy Connors, Germany / Demetrios Coutarelli, Greece Defne Durukan, Turkey / Erika Eckert, Germany / Piet Franzen, The Netherlands Anna Karina Fries, Germany / Dilara Garip, Turkey / Laurence Gillot, France Raquel Gociol, Argentina / Susan Gold, Canada / Marie-Christine De Grave, Belgium Sylvia Grimm, Germany / Sinasi Günes, Turkey /Nihal Güres. Turkey / i.g.h., United States Roland Halbritter, Germany / Doris Hauke, Germany / Michael Heinze, Germany Anita Henning, Germany / Francisca Geron Herrera, Mexico / Connie Jean, United States John Jennings, Ireland / Diana Kätscher, Germany / Josh Kemp, United States Uwe Klein, Germany / Waldemar Kosnar, Germany / Pedrag Kovacic, Serbia Magda Lagerwerf, The Netherlands / Karla Kolberg Lipp, Brazil Marcela Makrucz, Argentina / Russell Manning, United States Antonio De Marchi-Gherini, Italy / Dórian Ribas Marinho, Brazil Pietro Romano Matarrese, Italy / Eiichi Matsuhashi, Japan Anja Mattila-Tolvanen, Finland / Cindy McGrath, Canada Elise McWilliams, United States / Manuela Merl, Germany / Denis Mizzi, Australia Sabine Münchow, Germany / Kevin Nickerson, Canada Katerina Nikoltsou, Greece / Jürgen Olbrich, Germany / Clemente Padin, Uruguay Sylvano Pertone, Italy / Klaus Pinter, Austria / Horváth Piroska, Austria Gisela Pizzatto, Brazil / Poul Poclage, Denmark / Morena Regaiolli, Germany Rosalino Rodriguez, Switzerland / Friedrich Rueckert, Germany / Sigrid Sack, Germany Heike Sackmann, Germany / Roberta Savolini, Italy / Roberto Scala, Italy Lars Schumacher, Germany / Susanne Schumacher, Germany / Peter Seidel, Germany Eléna Signori, France / Sedanur Simsek, Turkey / Gizem Nur Sozer, Turkey Giovanni and Renata Stradada, Italy / Karl-Heinz Tartler, Germany Esma Tatar, Turkey / Edna Toffoli, Brazil / Giuseppe Luca Torraco, Italy Horst Tress, Germany / Kubra Ule, Turkey / Miche-Art-Universalis, Belgium Mikel Untzilla, Spain / Mzia Valerian, Belgium / Michel Della Vedova, France Darko Vulic, Switzerland / Michael Wagner, Germany / Simon Warren, United Kingdom Seyma Yasar, Turkey / Nur Yavuz, Turkey / Bernhard Zilling, Germany

Leonor Alicia Arnao Argentina

Ismail Akyildiz Turkey

Arno Arts The Netherlands

Mustafa Cevat Atalay Turkey

Gulsen Aydemir Turkey

Burcin Aydin Turkey

Walter Bachman Germany

Sabela BaĂąa Spain

Tiziana Baracchi Italy

Marita Bauer OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Lutz Beeke Germany

Annette Behlau Germany

Pedro Bericat Spain

Marzia Maria Braglia Italy

Fernando Calhau Brazil

Melih Can Turkey

Guido Capuano Italy

Antonia Mayol Castellรณ Spain

Atrayee Chattopadhyay United Arab Emirates

Ryosuke Cohen Japan

Jimmy Connors Germany

Demetrios Coutarelli Greece

Defne Durukan Turkey

Erika Eckert OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Piet Franzen The Netherlands

Anna Karina Fries Germany

Dilara Garip Turkey

Laurence Gillot France

Raquel Gociol Argentina

Susan Gold Canada

Marie-Christine De Grave Belgium

Sylvia Grimm OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Sinasi GÃ¼nes Turkey

Nihal GÃ¼res Turkey

i.g.h. United States

Roland Halbritter Germany

Doris Hauke OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Michael Heinze Germany

Anita Henning Germany

Francisca Geron Herrera Mexico

Connie Jean United States

John Jennings Ireland

Diana KÃ¤tscher OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Josh Kemp United States

Uwe Klein OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Waldemar Kosnar OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Pedrag Kovacic Serbia

Magda Lagerwerf The Netherlands

Karla Kolberg Lipp Brazil

Marcela Makrucz Argentina

Russell Manning United States

Antonio De Marchi-Gherini Italy

Dรณrian Ribas Marinho Brazil

Pietro Romano Matarrese Italy

Eiichi Matsuhashi Japan

Anja Mattila-Tolvanen Finland

Cindy McGrath Canada

Elise McWilliams United States

Manuela Merl Germany

Denis Mizzi Australia

Sabine MĂźnchow Germany

Kevin Nickerson Canada

Katerina Nikoltsou Greece

JĂźrgen Olbrich Germany

Clemente Padin Uruguay

Sylvano Pertone Italy

Klaus Pinter Austria

Horvรกth Piroska Austria

Gisela Pizzatto Brazil

Poul Poclage Denmark

Morena Regaiolli Germany

Rosalino Rodriguez Switzerland

Friedrich Rueckert OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Sigrid Sack Germany

Heike Sackmann Germany

Roberta Savolini Italy

Roberto Scala Italy

Lars Schumacher Germany

Susanne Schumacher Germany

Peter Seidel OBA Mail Art Group Germany

ElĂŠna Signori France

Sedanur Simsek Turkey

Gizem Nur Sozer Turkey

Giovanni and Renata StraDA DA Italy

Karl-Heinz Tartler OBA Mail Art Group Germany

Esma Tatar Turkey

Edna Toffoli Brazil

Giuseppe Luca Torraco Italy

Horst Tress Germany

Kubra Ule Turkey

Miche-Art-Universalis Belgium

Mikel Untzilla Spain

Mzia Valerian Belgium

Michel Della Vedova France

Darko Vulic Switzerland

Michael Wagner Germany

Simon Warren United Kingdom

Seyma Yasar Turkey

Nur Yavuz Turkey

Bernhard Zilling Germany

Afterimage≈Afterword The portrait, as an artistic genre, has preoccupied artists for generations. Over time, the human visage has been analysed, clinically documented, jazzed up to emphasise one’s looks or status, depicted in miniatures, and shown in full face, three-quarter or profile views. The face has also been veiled, flattened or distorted, dismantled, restructured, replaced with surrogates, overpainted and even erased so that only the faintest vestiges of its form remains.

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(L eft to right: Antonio de Marchi-Gherini, Edna Toffoli, Darko Vulic, Marzia Maria Braglia, Anja Mattila-Tolvanen, Marcela Makrucz, Gisela Pizzatto and John Jennings)

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Russell Smith writes: “Artists have always used their own faces for exploration of two kinds: technical and psychological. Both craft and introspection are involved. But people snapping sexy selfies don’t really want to look very different from pictures in advertising and they certainy don’t want to reveal intimate truths about themselves. I have claimed in this space that a selfie is simply a self-portrait, but the opposite could be argued. A selfie is the opposite of a self-portrait. A mask prevents revelation.” (Source: Russell Smith, Opinion: The problem with everyone taking the same selfie, The Globe and Mail, September 26, 2017, https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/the-problem-with-everyonetaking-the-same-elfie/article36401229/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&)

Afterimage≈Afterword

(Left to right: Connie Jean, Horváth Piroska, Arno Arts, Fernando Calhau, Anja Mattila-Tolvanen, Magda Lagerwerf, and Uwe Klein)

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Bernie Rhie, in researching faces and Wittgenstein’s writings, states: “…how intrigued he was by conceptual questions raised by the way we see and understand human faces. Not only did he spend a great deal of time thinking about face perception itself…, but significantly for us, he seems also to have been fascinated by how the way we understand the human face might be conceptually related to how we understand other meaningful phenomena, which he often tellingly spoke of as possessing faces or physiognomies of their own.” (Source: Bernie Rhie, Wittgenstein on the Face of a Work of Art, nonsite.org, issue #3, October 14, 2011, http://nonsite.org/article/wittgenstein-on-the-face-of-a-work-of-art)

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“Briefly stated, the universality hypothesis claims that all humans communicate six basic internal emotional states (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) using the same facial movements by virtue of their biological and evolutionary origins [Susskind JM, et al. (2008) Nat Neurosci 11:843–850],” but recent studies show that these responses are subject to cultural influences. Whereas Westerners use distinct sets of facial muscles to express the six emotions, Eastern responses are not only less distinct, they responses depend upon dynamic eye activity. (Source: R. E. Jack, O.G.B. Garrod, H. Yu, R. Caldara & P.G. Schyns, Facial expressions of emotion are not culturally universal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), vol. 109, no. 19, May 8., 2012, http://www.pnas.org/content/109/19/7241.full)

Afterimage≈Afterword

The face is a contradictory entity: joyful/anguished, timid/brash, focused/disinterested, guarded/outgoing, gentle/coarse. At once real and chimerical, it invites and defies interpretation.

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Jasper Johns made thiscomment about early work: “Any broken representation of the human physique is touching in some way; it’s upsetting or provokes reactions one can’t quite account for. Maybe because one’s image of one’s own body is disturbed by it.” (Source: John Yau, Twenty-Nine Thoughts on Jaspers Johns, Hyperallergic, September 3, 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/398620/twenty-nine-thoughts-on-jasper-johns/)

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(Left to right: Sylvia Grimm, Sabela Baña, Katerina Nikoltsou, Susan Gold, Horváth Piroska, Anita Henning, Katerina Nikoltsou, and Guido Capuano)

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(Left to right: Roberto Scala, Piet Franzen, Poul Poclage, Katerina Nikoltsou, Marie-Christine De Grave, Antonia Mayol Castelló, and Guido Capuano)

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How we understand the face is always changing. Technology influences this. An image of the unmanned microphone in Edna Toffoli’s mailing not only implies the mouth’s presence, but also the whole face, of which the mouth is only one part.

Afterimage≈Afterword Michelle Kasprzak has spoken about the machine’s influence on recognition and appearances: “…reality will be sculpted by machines…” and “…the integration of machine vision with the body and the public discomfort with this… raises the questions of the legal gray zone these technologies inhabit — when watching or when watching back.”

Janek Simon: Montauk

She later noted: “Artist Janek Simon recently produced an open source system for tracking eye movements and exhibited the system as well as the resulting images at Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw. The images were lovely and indicated where people’s eyes lingered: some obvious places, some not so obvious.” (Source: Michelle Kasprzak, “If a computer can’t find your face, do you not have one?” – talk at Mapping Festival, Michelle Kaprzak Art + Life + Technology, May 26, 2013, https://michelle.kasprzak.ca/blog/archives/1755)

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(Left to right: Katerina Nikoltsou, i.g.h., Susanne Schumacher, Anna Karina Fries, Sabine Münchow, Uwe Klein, Giovanni & Renata Stradada, Anja Mattila-Tolvanen and Uwe Klein)

Afterimage≈Afterword Today (27 September, 2017), I googled and binged and duckduckgoed and dogpiled and yandexed ‘21st century portrait’ on the internet. And what did I get?! Lots and lots of hits for this film: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.

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Some believe each and every artwork offers a portrait of the artist.

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(Left to right: Roland Halbritter, Antonio de Marchi-Gherini, Clemente Padin, Jürgen Olbrich, Susan Gold, and Heike Sackmann)

--What’s in a face? The face expresses thoughts and feelings, Holds heriditary information, And functions as a primary signifier of identity. It stipulates who we are. Or does it?

Acknowledgements This project could not have been realised without the contributions made by all of the participating artists. Their energy, sensitivity, generosity, humour and talent comes together in an alluring array of styles, media and artistic approaches that teems with intriguing viewpoints and adds up to being much more than a simple sum of the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parts. These few words have not only been written to highlight the contributorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efforts, but also to express a deep and abiding gratitude for being interested in the project.

& Further References Project Blog postboxtomailboxnoplainart.blogspot.com

--Previous Publications Visions of Europe - 2016 International Mail Art Project Helsinki, Finland https://issuu.com/johngayer/docs/visions_of_europe_catalogue_-_3rd_e

--Contact Taivaanvuohentie 3 B 13, 00200 Helsinki, Finland 4johngayer@gmail.com

The End