WEBVTT - generated by VCS

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My name is Jennifer Chert and I'm the founder

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and one of the co-owners and directors

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of ChertLüdde gallery in Berlin.

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It's a gallery that is specialized in

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international emerging artists

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in a broader sense.

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And we are based in Berlin,

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Schoenberg on Hauptstraße. After many years
in Kreuzberg,

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we moved here at the beginning of this year.

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Yes, the gallery is, in general, I would say,
specialized

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in emerging international artists – but not
only... And it’s

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actually something that's...

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Well, we are here to mainly talk about Ruth

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Wolf-Rehfeldt, who is a German artist of a
different generation.

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And I remember, for example, the first time
I met her

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I was talking about the gallery and I told
her that

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we had a gallery, which was specialized in
young international artists.

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She started to laugh and said: Oh, I really
don't fit in there.

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But actually she does very much.

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We met each other the first time in 2014.

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And since then, we have been starting to work
very, very closely together.

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In this moment here, we are actually

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in the part of the storage of the gallery and
this is a room,

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which is mainly dedicated

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to Ruth’s work.

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Ruth was working a lot in the paper format

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with the typewriting machine.

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And yeah, most of her productions,

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which were still left with her

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when we met, are now here.

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So the way that I met Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

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was via another artist, with whom we work at
the gallery, David Horvitz.

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He is an American artist based in L.A. and

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his, now, wife Zanna Gilbert,

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is currently a researcher at the at the Getty
in in L.A.

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And back in 2014, she was at MoMA

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in New York, and she was researching

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the Mail Art connection

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between Latin American and Germany. East Germany
in particular.

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And she was actually in the archive of Paulo
Bruscky in Recife in Brazil.

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And there she started to notice and to find
a lot of material

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coming from Germany, from the Rehfeldts. From
Robert Rehfeldt and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt.

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So she got extremely curious

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and she asked David Horvitz, when he was in
Berlin,

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to go and see the archive

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in Berlin, to see which materials they would
find

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sent from Latin America and Bruscky in particular.

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So, I went along with David to visit

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first Lutz Wohlrab, whom you also have met,

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and then afterwards we went to visit Ruth at
home.

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And that was love, basically.

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We discovered this amazing woman, an amazing
storyteller with

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huge history and fantasy and passion.

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And this was, as I said, in 2014.

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And this first encounter transformed into an
exhibition, which happened in

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January 2015.

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And this first exhibition was divided into
two parts.

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One part was an exhibition with works by Ruth
Wolf-Rehfeldt.

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There, we concentrated on small

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format and postcard formats, because it was
about trying to

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identify this connection with Mail Art, first
of all.

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And then the second part of the gallery was
an exhibition

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that actually Zanna curated with

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Mail Art exchanges between Paulo Bruscky and
Robert Rehfeldt.

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And it was a very beautiful exhibition with
a lot of material

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present there, which was material that Bruscky
had sent to Germany.

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So that was already here.

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And the whole digital reproduction in form
of a slideshow

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and documentation of the materials that exchange
had been sent to him,

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which was still in his archive, obviously,
in Brazil.

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And this exhibition was called Home Archives,

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which makes a lot of sense,

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because as we will see later when we move to
the archive,

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indeed, there are hundreds

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of archives of Mail Art in every house

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of all the artists that were involved, that
decided to keep it.

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And so Zanna was really pointing already to
this idea

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of this very close and intimate connection.

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Here we actually see some examples of works

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that both Ruth and Robert were producing specifically

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for the Mail Art, which means that the format
very, very important,

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because it’s a postcard format, which is
used in order to be sent

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very easily via the post and

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I think it’s very nice, because you also
see already

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the difference in style, which I think also

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corresponded a lot to their personality.

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So, Robert was using a lot of

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very clear and direct slogans

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in his Mail Art and

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he also developed this concept

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of contact art and this idea of sharing,

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not only of resources and connections, but
really also of ideas.

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He was saying: Your idea has my idea.

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So he had this very strong necessity

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and need for a very strong connection

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It’s not by chance,

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in fact, that Robert Rehfeldt is considered
one of the

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most important pioneers of the Mail Art movement
in Germany in general.

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He was extremely committed and extremely passionate

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and very much pushing it.

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And this is also how Ruth, who was

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his wife, got involved with the movement.

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And she also has clearly

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a language-based approach.

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But the way that she used language is much
more connected

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with the idea of visual poetry and concrete
poetry.

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So it's very visual, very metaphorical,

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but it's not like a direct confrontation.

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And she created

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very different series. Here, for example,

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is a series that she called the “Concrete

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figures” which refers both to architecture
or also the idea of

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presences.

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There are a lot of images in this concrete
series,

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that really remind you of robots in a certain
sense.

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And it’s also responding to this idea of
state control,

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that obviously they lived under, because

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they were in the former GDR.

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And clearly there was also a form of checking

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and control by the state authorities of their
activity.

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Ruth has a lot of pieces, which are reminiscent
of this,

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like this idea of something like a wave,

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that is always there, controlling you, or

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again, these robots

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and also bureaucratic presences sometimes.

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And then she has other series, which are much
more,

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let's say, light and poetic,

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like rains made up of different characters.

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And what is really nice, for example, this
one here,

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it's a is clearly one that she prepared to

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to send via mail. It’s addressed to Arrigo
Lora-Totino,

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who is an Italian artist, who was also

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involved in Mail Art.

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And I've actually also visited his archive
in Torino.

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He passed away

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a few years ago and

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the wife, who was still [living] in their house
in Torino,

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opened the archive a little bit.

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I went to visit them a few years ago

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and there I actually also found other works
by Ruth, which had been mailed.

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But this was never mailed and so it's here.

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And it’s from 1979.

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So, they both started

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in the mid-1970s to be involved with the

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Mail Art movement.