Papeles Pegados

Collage and mail art converge in Papeles Pegados ("Glued Papers"), the Barcelona artist Pere Sousa's contribution to Redfoxpress's C'est mon Dada series, its cover pairing old-master portraiture with a photograph of a technician adjusting a measuring apparatus.

Published in February 2020 as volume 141, the 44-page hardcover follows the series' standard A6 format (10.5 × 15 cm), thread-and-quarter-cloth bound and laser-printed on ivory paper. Sousa's spreads glue together salvaged prints, portrait photography, and diagrams of scientific instruments, working in the cut-and-paste tradition &mdash text combined with found image &mdash that defines the series.

Sousa (1955&ndash2023) was a central figure in Spanish mail art: born in Pont de Suert, Catalonia, he studied sculpture at the University of Barcelona before turning to postal art in 1992. He edited P.O.BOX and Artstrike from 1994 to 2000, founded the Factoria Merz Mail archive, organized artist-stamp and mail-art exhibitions across Spain, and was recognized as one of the country's foremost sound poets for his interpretations of Kurt Schwitters.