Christian BALMIER
CREATIVE PROCESS
Some works from Series No. 1
Some explanations about my Mail-Art creations…
It was at the beginning of 1980, initiated by a friend from Barcelona, that I began to correspond with several “Mail-artists” (Antoine Laval in Spain, Pawel Petasz in Poland, Bill Gaglione and John Held in the USA, Johan Van Geluwe in Belgium…).
A little frustrated with sending my creations – on which I spent a lot of time – without hope of seeing them again one day, I thought about atypical postal circuits, unexplored avenues that would allow me to recover my shipments.
As a fan of Hergé and Jacobs, I had noticed that these two “classic” comic book authors always gave the precise coordinates of the characters in their stories during the plot. Quite naturally, I imagined writing to them to see what would happen to my expeditions. So I designed special square envelopes, each time decorated on the front and back in the mood of the recipient character and in the style of the comic book author.
Drawing addresses from Hergé's albums , I sent letters to Tintin (in Scotland, Peru, Belgium), to Captain Haddock (Sanzot butcher's shop, in Moulinsart - Belgium), to Bianca Castafiore (at La Scala in Milan), to Professor Tournesol, to the infamous Rastapopoulos , to Tchang Tchong Jen in China...
From Jacobs' scripts , I wrote: Professor Mortimer, Captain Francis Blake , the satanic Doctor Septimus , Professors Labrousse and Grossgrabenstein ...
After a hazardous journey, sometimes lasting several months, these letters came back to me with the official stamps of the destination cities, various notes such as “Does not live at the address indicated”, as well as handwritten annotations from conscientious or complicit postmen. “ This address only exists in Tintin albums ” wrote a Belgian clerk on an envelope addressed to Séraphin Lampion!
My favorite stamp, of course, is “ NO LONGER living at the address given .”
For me, this is the beginning of proof of the existence of a fictional character!
My shipments, made by “registered” mail , guarantee vigilant attention from the postal services and allow me to officially protest in the event of late return .
This was the case several times and I had the opportunity to receive very serious letters from the French post office in which I was assured that my complaint was unfounded because if the letter had not been returned to me it was because it had indeed been delivered “in person” to Captain Blake at the Hôtel Métropole in Brussels or to Professor Bolero y Calamares at the University of Salamanca!
So, after a formal complaint to the Post Office, I still have no news, for example, of a letter addressed in 1980 to “Inspectors Dupont and Dupond, Security Directorate” in Brussels, Belgium...
Despite this careful monitoring, I ultimately deplore around 10% losses .
On their return, these envelopes have an interest for me on several levels: aesthetic of course - including with the random side of the positioning of the postmarks - but also emotional , loaded as they are with the traces of an uncertain journey , often long and strewn with pitfalls...
These “boomerang” mailings to fictional characters constitute my first series and are duly registered...
Dropping off a Mail-Art at the post office, Paris, 1986
Mail-Performance : "Autopsy"
Mail-Performance : "Tribute to Pablo" sent as "cash on delivery" to the Picasso Museum in Paris
I work in series and, in a playful parody of administrative workings , I number all my shipments which, from No. 1 of the first series (addressed to Mickey Mouse in the United States), are recorded in a large black register which includes the complete description of each shipment.
In this same spirit, and to live up to the postal network, I regularly publish my own stamps (without face value!) and stamps of my creation (I have more than a hundred to date).
I use these elements on all my mail, creating a graphic design + stamps + stamp set that is personal to me .
Seeking to surprise and have fun, both with my correspondents and with the postal workers of the global network, I imagined a concept that I called “ Mail-performances ” : mailings involving active participation in the postal chain and from the final recipient.
In this diagram, I sent to friends in Spain an “autopsy” envelope that assumed a pseudo-surgical intervention directly on the envelope. In the scenario sent beforehand, each step of the “operation” was precisely defined as well as the photos to be taken. The necessary equipment (surgical gloves and masks, surgical drape, sterile caps, bottle of ether) was contained in the envelope ...
In this provocative spirit , I thought of using the “Cash on Delivery” method (now little used) to send paintings to people who had asked me for nothing and to ask them for money as well!
I made canvases of 49 x 49 cm, the maximum format accepted by the Post Office (total of the 3 dimensions less than 1 m), mounted on wood, which I sent to Museum Curators...
A “ Tribute to Pablo ” at the Picasso Museum, a “ Homage to Magritte ” at the painter’s museum in Brussels, a “ Tribute to Vincent ” at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam... These are most often self-portraits, pastiches in the style of the painter concerned and whose value claimed against reimbursement is the maximum authorized by the Post Office (€3,500, for example for Magritte in Belgium!).
Of course, the Curators cannot accept these out-of-the-ordinary submissions from a wacko who shamelessly tries to force their hand; and my paintings come back to me a while later with the official note “REFUSED”!
I have further explored the following avenues:
• “ Female Envelope ” which consists of sending a female-shaped envelope through the Post Office that I folded in the middle, thus preventing the visual from being immediately readable during the postal journey... I then made 4 stamps in the image of these monochrome envelopes.
• For “ Paris Fantasmes ”, I designed large drawings (40 x 50 cm), folded in their center, on the theme of each of the 20 arrondissements of Paris.
These letters, sent to symbolic or fanciful addresses (in the 9th arrondissement to Melle Eva/122 rue de Provence - the famous “one-two-two” now gone - in the 6th arrondissement to Sainte Rita/place St Sulpice, in the 18th arrondissement to Monsieur Christian, an African marabout on boulevard Barbès ...) came back to me after a quick trip in the bags of Parisian postmen.
• “ Mail-Art Portraits ”: I redraw on my photos of the recipient, printed on canvas with strong pixelation, I add collages, my stamps and my stamps and I send everything folded and correctly stamped...
My recent series “ Tribute to Hollywood ”, sent to the last known addresses of American movie stars, is based on this concept.
• As part of an exhibition held in December 2008 at the Sélect and then in 2010 at the Sparts gallery in Paris, I participated in collective Mail-Art creations with a number of contemporary artists such as Viallat, Villeglé, Klasen, Truc, Le Cloarec, Dugain, Cueco, Di Rosa, Guyomard, Hosszu, Ljuba, Druillet, Mesnager, etc.; large-format paintings most often done by four hands, in the spirit of the “exquisite corpses” dear to the surrealists…
I have also sent about 80 submissions to Mail-Art exhibitions around the world and about 150 to occasional or regular “Mail-Artist” correspondents such as Pawel Petasz in Poland, John Held, Mike Dickau, Picasso Gaglione, Buz Blurr in the USA, Gyorgy Galantaï in Hungary, Klaus Groh in Germany, Fabio Sassi, Matteo Cagnola, Vittore Barroni in Italy, Dimitri Babenko in Russia, Ryosuke Cohen in Japan, Clemente Padin in Uruguay, Ben, Daligand, Michel Hosszu, Bensidon in France…
Finally, as a professional documentarian, in 2002 I made a 52-minute TV film, “Mail-Art/Art Postal,” in which I present, through living examples, this contemporary creative movement that is virtually unknown to the general public.
Christian BALMIER – La Farlede, Var, August 2024
