Felipe Ehrenberg: 26 Maculate Letters from Mexico | An Unfinished Conversation

Paraíso presents Felipe Ehrenberg: 26 Maculate Letters from Mexico | An Unfinished Conversation, bringing to London a group of 26 works conceived by Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg (1943–2017) for an exhibition originally planned in the city in 2016 but never realised.

At the centre of the presentation are the 26 Maculate Letters from Mexico, works sent by Ehrenberg through the postal system as part of a project in which correspondence became both medium and method. For Ehrenberg, the letter was never simply a vehicle for communication. It was a form of movement — between people, places, images and ideas — and a way of allowing an artwork to circulate beyond the conventional spaces of exhibition.

The postal system had been part of Ehrenberg’s artistic and personal vocabulary since his arrival in Britain in 1968. Struck by the efficiency of the British postal service, he began corresponding intensely between Britain, Mexico and an expanding international network of artists and collaborators. Decades later, the Maculate Letters returned to this history, testing what remained of the postal system while recovering, in Ehrenberg’s own terms, the pleasure
of receiving a “real” letter.

Presented ten years after the exhibition was first conceived, the works now enter a different space and historical moment. They are shown in dialogue with other works included in the presentation, revealing recurring elements within Ehrenberg’s practice: fragments, signs, words and images that circulate, collide, disappear and return. Rather than reconstructing the exhibition that might have been, An Unfinished Conversation allows an interrupted exchange to continue.

Ehrenberg was a pioneering Mexican artist, publisher, cultural activist and self-described neologist whose practice crossed mail art, performance, publishing, drawing and experimental forms of communication. His years in Britain and his involvement in artist-led publishing became central to a practice in which circulation, collaboration and exchange repeatedly challenged the boundaries of the artwork.

Perhaps every letter remains unfinished until someone opens it.

INFORMATION

Felipe Ehrenberg (Mexico 1943–2017), was a pioneering Mexican artist whose work defied easy classification. Throughout his career, he explored conceptual art, performance, mail art, mimeography, artist’s books, installations, painting, collage, and editorial projects. After the political upheavals of 1968 in Mexico, Ehrenberg went into exile in England, where he co-founded Beau Geste Press — an important hub for experimental publications and Fluxus-related collaborations. His work during this period connected artists across continents through printed visual poetry and conceptual networks.
 
Upon returning to Mexico, he co-founded the collective Grupo Proceso Pentágono and later H2O Talleres de Comunicación, creating public murals and fostering cultural projects rooted in community participation. His artistic and political commitments often merged, producing work that was both socially engaged and formally experimental. Ehrenberg also served as Mexico’s cultural attaché in Brazil from 2001 to 2006. Over more than five decades, his practice remained committed to collaboration, activism, and constant reinvention, securing his legacy as one of
Latin America’s most influential and unconventional contemporary artists.

Selected Exhibitions

2021 – Testamento (1968–2017), retrospective of collages, ISLAA, New York
2017 – Living in My Art-room (solo), Baró Galeria, São Paulo
2015 – Felipe Ehrenberg 67 // 15, first solo exhibition in Spain, Galería Freijo, Madrid
2010 – Manchuria – visión periférica, retrospective at Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; then
MOLAA, Los Angeles; and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
2003 – Interfaces Contemporâneas – MAC 40 Anos, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP
1977 – Poéticas Visuais, MAC USP, São Paulo
1968 – Salón Codex de Pintura Latinoamericana, Buenos Aires (representing Mexico)
 
Collections

Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City
National Museum of Printing, Mexico City
Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City
Museum of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico DF
Museum of Contemporary Art of Morelia, Mich. Mexico
El Chopo University Museum of Sciences and Arts, Mexico DF. Pascual and Art Workers
Cultural Foundation (Mexico) Juan José Díaz Infante and Jennifer Dastur Collection
Jesús Galván Collection
Enrique Jackson Ramírez Collection Carlos Martínez Collection Antonio Mayer Collection
Francisco Rocha Merino Collection Pedro Meyer Collection
Museum of Contemporary Art of Sao Paulo, Brazil (Pinacoteca) Franklin Rawson
Museum of Fine Arts, Argentina.
Museum of Solidarity With Chile Salvador Allende.
Museum of Art of the University of Puerto Rico, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture
Art and Communication Center (CAYC), Buenos Aires
Visual Arts Center / Museo del Barrio de Asunción; Asunción, Paraguay (monographic
monotype) National Museum of Mexican Art Chicago, Museum of Latin American Art,
Long Beach, California
Museum of Contemporary Art 0f Chicago (Chicago, Ill. USA) Museum of Contemporary
Art of Chicago, Artist Books Holding
Museum of Modern Art of New York
The Banff Center for the Arts, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Mexican Museum of San Francisco, California
Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y

La Raza Art Gallery & Cultural Center, San Francisco, Ca.
Fondo del Sol, Washington D.C.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
International Museum of Electrography of Cuenca, Spain
Tate National Gallery, London,
TOOL Center, Milan
Fiat Collection, Italy