Ryosuke Cohen's Brain Cell [51]

The Japanese artist Ryosuke Cohen, who for decades has been sending out waves of his Brain Cell sheets of rubber stamp images across the planet, picked up on Peter Dowker's mailing (below) in his edition No. 752. The sheets are typically A3 size and something of a magazine of the various logos and phrases and images in rubber stamps that pour into the artist's studio.

Writes Peter in explaining why Ryosuke didn't directly contribute to the project: "I think he has a mission to produce 150 copies of these rubber stamp prints every 10 days and he doesn't stray too far from that. But the fact that he chose this to include over anything else on the card shows that it didn't go unnoticed."  [See Peter Dowker's website, FLIP FLOP MAIL ART].

Peter sent a detail of the Cohen piece: "It's strategically located next to a great OH BOY Ray Johnson stamp "Eating Toejam."

Ryosuke Cohen is something of a mirror of global mail art activities.  See his web site and blog here: http://www.ryosukecohen.com/

Cohen writes on his site: "Recently, I have observed many signs that make me feel as if Mail Art is drawing to a close, and that there are many past publications that could be seen as 'compilations' of Mail Art. Quite a few predecessors of Mail Art have passed away, including Ray Johnson (USA), the Father of Mail Art, G.A.Cavellini (ITALY), Robin Croziel (ENGLAND), Robert Rehfeldt (GERMANY), G.Deisler (GERMANY), Carlo Pittore (USA) and others. This is probably also because exchange by mail in the age of computers is considered primitive, and after the end of the COLD WAR between the East and the West, the necessity of correspondence between those two different worlds has been lost. On the other hand, I have been regularly receiving mail art by mail and fax, in response to my BRAIN CELL PROJECT dating from the year 1985, which has been numbered issue No. 652, as of June 2006.


Every time I receive mail art, I am pleased to see more and more new participants. After making them a collage of their drawings, designs, logos, seals, stickers and the like, I make it a rule to send the finished project back to each participant.

Mail Art is far from finishing. I appreciate the role of collaboration in Mail Art. It is important to have new participants each time, but it is more important to be evoked by other mail artists' ideas from within the large and deep Network with a diverse range of expressions and concept. I can make mail artists' ideas more interesting by actively availing myself of seals and stamps and other materials sent from others and through my own printed matter. What is more, I can give other mail artists the feeling that they can utilise other's art and collaborate their ideas."