Postcard collection

I think of my collection of postcards depicting reproductions of paintings as a work. This collection of images has become a necessary tool and is part of the complex system that defines my world and as such it cannot be disbanded until the end of my days.
 
These rectangular bits of card were bought over the years on visits to see the history of painting around the world. They constitute a sort of concise picture gallery. They are organised alphabetically according to the artist’s surname and are kept in wooden boxes I keep with me in my studio.
 
They are images of things I have seen and that I have had a direct relationship with – they are souvenirs in the true sense of the word. They are connected to the experience of fruition, or rather they are tools for remembering, evoking moments experienced when standing before a painting, visual traces of when the gaze came into contact with the paintings – in other words they are painterly thoughts.
 
It is not a method I have constructed but a form of collecting something that already existed. It does not consist of everything I have seen and everything I have wanted to see, but of everything that I found concerning a certain painted work documented and reproduced over the years. (Sometimes I have returned to the same place years later and found different postcards. In fact, the collection contains different reprints of some of the works.)
I decided never to personally take a photo of the works, but to take something that already existed. The images are thus determined by a certain chance depending on the tastes imposed by a system that goes beyond my choices.
 
Some postcards were right before my eyes for years, either on the walls or resting on the shelves of my studio. As is the case for many other painters I know, they have become actual work tools. I use them for drawing, for looking, for thinking and for remembering.
The painting is the transposition of the thought, the language, the space I have chosen to remain in either due to my predisposition or intuitive choice. These small objects have become useful tools for thinking about them.
 
The date in the archive relates to the moment I decided that this collection was going to become a work.

Each postcard is marked on the back with the archive stamp.

Collections
Collections of things that at a certain point I decided to confer with the statute of works.

Tool
Opere che possono essere utilizzate come strumenti per fare qualcos’altro nello studio e nell’archivio