Since the 1960s, the postcard has played an important communicative role in the international art scene. Inexpensive and often produced in large numbers, they reached a wider audience than prints with their combination of image and text. In the artist-authored invitation card, the boundaries between free and applied art disappear; the artist's card can be an original graphic work or, through revision, even a unique work of art.
Subversive and democratic, the postcard was a suitable means of communication for many artists to bring art and life together, to spread ideas, to invite to exhibitions and to network with each other. This was evident in the Fluxus movement as well as in Mail Art. Both artistic movements were widespread in Western and Eastern Europe until the end of the 1980s. In conceptual art, as well, the postcard in its minimalist appearance was a popular medium.
Since the use of smartphones and social media, the postcard has in general lost some relevance, but has not disappeared to this day. The exhibition shows approximately 500 postcards by around 200 artists from the extensive private collection of the British author Jeremy Cooper. Cooper has amassed his collection of several thousand cards over many years of intensive research and collecting, and in 2019, he exhibited a first section at the British Museum in London. The focus of the exhibition in Dresden is on the 1960s to 1980s in Germany and Europe, supplemented by artists' cards from the last 30 years.
The Dresden-based artist Daniel Rode has created four postcards for the exhibition and conceived the intervention NEXT TIME.
