S.I.E.P. (Sàpigues i Entenguis Produccions). RÀBIA I DESENCÍS

The postal art group SIEP (Sàpigues i Entenguis Produccions) was founded in Reus in 1981 and, just three years later, disbanded. Throughout its short existence, nearly thirty people collaborated in the creation of more than fifty anonymous postal items, which periodically arrived by mail to hundreds of recipients around the world. “S.I.E.P. RAGE AND DISGUST” traces the group’s journey through a wide-ranging presentation of its production, which, in addition to postal items, includes objects, photography, videos and publications.

The exhibition, which does not follow a strict chronological order, is structured around three fields of action: the organization of exhibitions, its activity as a postal art group and the subsequent operation of the SIEP as a publishing house until 1986. By gathering the group's production into work areas, these categories cease to function as watertight vessels and expose an uncomplicated diversity of artistic positions and the will to operate outside of conventions.

The exhibition's itinerary aims to highlight the importance of collective work in a context, that of the early 1980s in the Camp de Tarragona, which was seeking to fit into an artistic map governed by centralism and institutionalization. Projects such as Visura plástica and Un corrent d'air fresc, both made in 1981, bear witness to the emergence of this associative spirit in the months immediately preceding the formation of the SIEP.

In an article about the group, historian Pere Anguera noted that the SIEP arose from anger and disenchantment, "from anger against an imprisoned culture and a co-opting politics. From disenchantment with the too little that was noticeable in excessively numerous and broad fields the incidence of the new democracy of trinca, which confirmed privileges and prebends". The exhibition presents the work of the SIEP as a reflection of that historical moment and, at the same time, as a record of the vital force of a project that, despite cultivating a playful tone, maintained a critical and vigilant attitude.

Marc Navarro