This month, the Brooklyn space Ground Floor Gallery is hosting its second “mail art” biennial. Its walls are covered in artworks small enough to palm—and to fit into the local P.O. box where submissions for the show were sent.
Krista Saunders Scenna, who runs the gallery with Jill Benson, publicized the exhibition’s open call through email and Facebook, and received mail art submissions from India, Cyprus, and Mexico—as well as from a mere few blocks away. “A big part of the excitement of this show was opening the postbox and being introduced to new artists, new work,” says Saunders Scenna, “and then making connections between them.”
The show, designed to be “accessible to both artists and collectors,” is overwhelmingly democratic. The first 250 submissions are included at the gallery, all bearing the same $100 price tag. In this way, Ground Floor Gallery is keeping alive the ethos of Johnson and the early mail art pioneers, celebrating inclusivity, community-building, playfulness, and a mischievous upending of what the art world considers valuable.