In 2015, Performa, in collaboration with The Ray Johnson Estate, presented ‘Please Add To and Return To’. This exhibition was staged at Printed Matter in New York, and was the culmination of Performa’s 2015 mail art re-activation project celebrating the life and work of artist Ray Johnson, one of the most revered underground artists of the last half of the 20th century.

During the pandemic and first set of lockdowns in 2020, Ray Johnson’s legendary mail art project ‘Please Add To And Return To’, was once again resurrected. When the artists’s iconic templates were placed back by Performa in circulation in 2015, participants were invited to draw, collage or otherwise ‘add to’ them and ‘return’ them to Ray Johnson c/o Performa.

Five years on, this homage was further extended by the Ray Johnson Estate and Performa. Altering the project for the digital age, Performa situated the templates in monthly art publications, local newspapers, and online as PDF files, and included, ‘Please Add Hair to Cher’; ‘The Starn Twins’; ‘Andy Warhol Interview’ and ‘Ray Johnson Silhouette’. Altered templates are being accepted on a rolling basis, and are still being posted on The Ray Johnson Estate website and social media pages using the hashtag #PleaseAddTo, as a place where to follow the evolution of this project.

Background information

Ray Johnson (1927-1995) was a seminal Pop Art figure in the 1950s, an early conceptualist, and a pioneer of mail art. His preferred medium was collage, that quintessentially twentieth-century art form that reflects the increased (as the century wore on) collision of disparate visual and verbal information that bombards modern man. rayjohnsonestate.com

Performa is a multidisciplinary non-profit arts organization, founded by art historian RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of 20th-century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the 21st century, engaging artists and audiences through experimentation, innovation, and collaboration. performa-arts.org

Printed Matter Inc. was founded in 1976, and is the world’s leading non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination, understanding and appreciation of artists’ books and related publications. printed matter.org

Images: Cos Ahmet, ‘#PleaseAddToAndReturnTo’, 2020 - a series of contributions using Johnson’s familiar templates that were circulated by The Ray Johnson Estate & Performa, combining them with a variety of found and appropriated imagery, including resources from the artist’s own archive, as his additions. These contributions were posted online alongside a plethora of submissions, via social media channels and to the Ray Johnson Estate project’s growing archive.