Gea Casolaro
SEND ME A POSTCARD – A SITE, ASIDE, INSIDE, IN BETWEEN, AWAY

27 September 2013 – 9 February 2014

For this commission entrusted to her by CNA, Gea Casolaro travelled during three weeks the length and breadth of Luxembourg. A "user of space", in reference to Georges Perec, from whose work and thought she draws part of her inspiration, she rapidly found herself face to face with the ordinariness of local news items, with traces of history and culture, with "precious treasures that one finds without having looked for them". She explored this universe in its multiple dimensions, taking her time and observing, to capture what at first sight seemed devoid of interest as material for her postcards. In the words of Perec: "The problem is not to invent space, even less to reinvent it, but to question it, or more simply, to read it […]".

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
This exhibition is to me a small synthesis of Luxembourg: a sort of poetic reflection of my impressions of the country. And it is also for this reason that I chose to do a show that is like a work in progress, one that shifts continuously and that grows from external contributions. In fact, during the six months of the exhibition, everyone is invited to send postcards from other places that echo mine, thereby creating a dialogue; accordingly, the show becomes multi-faceted and changes over time through similarities and convergences, and even through unexpected exchanges and correlations, in order to mirror the reality of this country exactly.

The postcards, those small coloured pieces of cardboard that are usually a banal synthesis giving a slightly superficial and saccharine version of the supposed beauties of a country, can lead us to reflect on all of this if they are used as a key to a total understanding of a country, rather than as a simple and slightly nostalgic object, replaced in our times by snapshots dumped into the hodge-podge of internet only to be abandoned to the infinite magma of the large memories of servers.

The postcard that someone chooses during a journey from the rack while thinking of us, and which has been written at the table of a bar while observing the passing people, in order to find the right and specific words to say to its intended receiver; this postcard to which a stamp is attached after a long search and that gets put in the letterbox filled with thoughts, atmosphere and things experienced. And then there is the next stage of this postcard: it gets collected from the letterbox and passes through various post offices, and then goes by airplane, train, bus, scooter and bicycle in a bag hanging from the shoulder of the postman, until it finally arrives in our very own mailbox. A true and proper journey within the journey.

This is the true sense of travelling for me: to move forward while taking the time to acknowledge randomness, ready to make a discovery with the heart and eyes constantly open. Leaving room for the unexpected, for the as of yet unknown that can fill us with awe, and for everything in a journey, as in life, that can reveal new and different things about the world and about ourselves, we who build the world everyday.