[Mail Art Stigma Archive] #11 Brain Cell by Ryosuke Cohen , Japan

 

Brain Cell is a mail art project begun by Ryosuke Cohen in June 1985. The project is a networked art project where individual artists contribute stamps, stickers, drawings or other images. These are sent through the mail to Cohen, who assembles and prints them as part of each cell. He prints 150 copies (30 x 42 cm) with a small silkscreen system called a Cyclostyle (now out of production). Each participant is mailed a Brain Cell print along with a documentation list of contributors world wide. (from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Cell)

All the Brain cell artwork by Ryosuke Cohen here:

https://brain-cell-compilation.blogspot.com/

Biography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryosuke_Cohen

Ryosuke Cohen (幸円 良介, Kōen Ryōsuke, born 1948 in Osaka, Japan) is a mail artist. He was responsible for the Brain Cell mail art project,which he began in June 1985 and retains thousands of members in more than 80 countries, e.g. Hans Braumüller, Theo Breuer, Michael Leigh or Litsa Spathi. In August 2001 he began the Fractal Portrait Project. He has taught art to school children for more than 25 years.

Cohen discovered mail art through the Canadian artist Byron Black. Early work by Cohen is a mixture of traditional Japanese imagery, contemporary icons, and numbers, as well as his signature, the letter "C".

In 1997 Guy Bleus organised a solo exhibition of Cohen's mail art work at the E-Mail Art Archives in the Centre for Visual Arts (now Z33) in Hasselt (Belgium).

Cohen's family name is conventionally romanized as Kōen, but on the advice of a friend, he adopted the English spelling 'Cohen'. He is not a Kohen.

Ryosuke Cohen è nato ad Osaka in Giappone nel 1948. Byron Black un giorno lo convinse a mutare lo “spellig” del suo vero nome Kouen in Cohen come in ebraico. L’artista giapponese è noto nel mondo della Mail Art per le sue originalissime opere. Cohen adopera una tecnica personale utilizzando immagini, timbri, etichette, collage ed altro materiale speditogli da centinaia di artisti di tutto il mondo. Così facendo gli autori di tali opere collaborano al suo planetario progetto nella realizzazione di art works “Cellule Cerebrali Fractal” che oramai lo caratterizzano da anni facendolo definire dalla critica come un caposaldo del movimento Mail Art. Le sue opere ed i suoi progetti sono stati esposti nei musei più prestigiosi del mondo. Moltissimi archivi custodiscono una sua pregiatissima documentazione.

https://artefice.art/ryosuke-cohen/

intervista in italiano a Ryosuke Cohen

https://www.lineadarte-officinacreativa.org/intervista-a-ryosuke-cohen/