The Newest, Smallest Gallery in New Orleans
Jorge Lucero at French Quarter Postal
New Orleans’ newest art gallery is 5 x 5 x 16 inches. It’s a postal box and new exhibition space called French Quarter Postal. The project, created by artist Jon Gott, aims to create “an access junction” for viewers to find “correspondence” in P.O. Box 322 at the French Quarter Postal Emporium on Bourbon Street. Interestingly, the project’s description does not include the word “art.” In a text exchange with Gott, he said he wanted to leave it up to artists whether to invoke the term. I told Gott of course I’d check it out, but when the time came, I didn’t really want to drive to the French Quarter in 95-degree heat to see mail art, which can be underwhelming. However, Jorge Lucero’s Permissions for Documentation: A Guide for Showing Evidence of Your Conceptual Art Practice is well-worth the trip, and wasn’t really “mail art” other than it had been delivered by mail.
Mail art, officially born in the 1960s, has attracted off-shoots and participants throughout the world. There is no consistent format or protocol for mail art other than mail, the noun and verb, is an essential component of the art. Sometimes participants mail small, original artworks to an organizer who collects and relays the art to viewers as individual works or bound in books or zines. Sometimes postcards are mailed to a location where they are shown and sold as charitable fundraising. There is no prescribed aesthetic, though collage, rubber stamps, and surrealism seem prevalent in some strains. Mail art is generally not treated as precious, the way gallery art or museum art is. The downside of this accessible, movable art form is that it can produce art that doesn’t mind getting banged up or lost in the mail.
I found a parking spot right outside the Postal Emporium. In fact, the French Quarter was relatively empty, and I had forgotten how charming it can be when tourism falls to a murmur. I opened the narrow door—old wood and glass—and went inside. The place smelled like mail—paper and glue—and had the atmosphere of a small-town general store with carousels of sundries throughout the space. A small refrigerator offered reasonably priced cold drinks by the register. At the counter, I asked the point-person for the key. She handed it to me, then directed me to a cozy alcove lit by a wall lamp with a shade. The pink wall and geometry of the boxes next to the shabby chic of the lampshade, plus the curious nature of the errand, made me feel like I’d entered a Wes Anderson film. I found box 322, unlocked it and opened the little door.
Inside is a softcover book I removed carefully from the narrow box. The book felt new and smooth, a little heavier than I expected. An image of light green grass fills the front and back covers. The title in large, bright red letters begins on the back cover, crosses the spine, and concludes on the front. Below the title, in small white letters is: Jorge Lucero, French Quarter Postal/New Orleans 2024, indicating the book was made specifically for this exhibition. There is something familiar about the cover, though: The letters are a particular red that clashes with the green, creating an optical vibration. It recalls the Gallerie Bruno Bischofberger advertisements whose campy views of the Swiss Alps have occupied the back cover of Artforum magazine since 1987. Later, when we spoke by phone, Lucero laughed when I asked about the correlation and confirmed yes, the cover is a nod to the iconic Bischofberger ads. It wouldn’t be necessary for a viewer to catch this, but I felt the reward of “getting it.” Had I not been in on the joke, the cover would have still been a bold, pretty entrance to the piece.
The book is part text, part image. The left pages contain a short sentence or two in large (36-point) typeface, black on plenty of white space, easy to absorb at a glance, without exactly reading. One hundred text-image spreads nudge the viewer into fresh creative thought. The deliberately heavy-handed title—Permissions for Documentation: A Guide for Showing Evidence of Your Conceptual Art Practice—betrays the direct simplicity of the “permissions.” The tone established is conviction laced with good humor, like a favorite professor, instructive and inspiring. “Be serious about it. Stop playing around” sits opposite a wall of absurdly piled chairs. The accompanying images don’t illustrate the text, but don’t ignore it either. The gap between the text and the image is a semi-structured play space for the viewer’s thoughts, something conceptual art does at its best.
Conceptual art can appear like the emperor’s new clothes: a trick or mass deception about something that isn’t really there. Sometimes, even though I find value in esoteric art, I want to shout that the emperor is naked, that the art is stuck in the mind of the maker. Some conceptual artwork places too much of the burden on the viewers. By contrast, Jorge Lucero’s work at French Quarter Postal is hospitable to the viewer, each detail considered and worth considering. Floor-sitting in that little cubby with the book, I slowed down, lost time, and my thoughts moved in new patterns and configurations. This is, as I see it, the goal of conceptual art. I asked the artist how he defines or describes conceptual art. He said, “Conceptual artists use gestures and actions that provoke thinking in both the maker and viewer… toward what end? To be more in control of your own articulations… to be mindful.”
The white cube gallery is a defining space, a controlled context. We know that whatever objects or gestures that are found within its walls, whether it’s a painting or a pile of candy, is art. Jorge Lucero’s Permissions… and the whole proposition of French Quarter Postal takes us outside the usual container that defines what art is, where it goes, and how we look at it. After I returned the book to the mailbox and the key to its keeper, I left the Postal Emporium aware that my mood had shifted, and my thinking was a little more sparkly. My tepid expectations, the surprising ease of the journey, the charm of the setting, and the intelligent generosity in Jorge Lucero’s artwork harmonized to create a whole experience, the boundary of which is indeterminate, subject to change from viewer to viewer. Here I am, still thinking about it.
Jorge Lucero is on view through September 14 at French Quarter Postal Emporium, 1000 Bourbon St. Ask for the key to Box 322. More information can be found at jongott.com/french-quarter-postal or @frenchquarterpostal on Instagram.
photo courtesy Jorge Lucero
