Dear Max, Dear Ray, Dear Vince

February 4 - March 27, 2010

This exhibition presents Ray Johnson’s correspondence art, spanning the mid-’50s to the late ’70s, culled from two private archives. It gives evidence to the chameleon-like identity that Johnson manifested in relation to his correspondent. For Earl and Carol Brown, he was working distinctly in a Surrealist–Dadaist tradition, under the shadow of Ernst and Duchamp; while for Vince Aletti, a member of the The New York Correspondence School, he presented himself as a whimsical pornographic provocateur, amending images back and forth through the post, often seeking out introductions to cultural affiliates.