Correcaminos VII/ Roadrunner VII, 2012

Eugenio Dittborn lays out a manifesto for his airmail paintings. Dittborn invented airmail paintings by accident. Happening in early 1983 to fold a large piece of wrapping paper four times upon itself, and then unfold it again, he noticed that the wrapping paper was reticulated by its folds.Dittborn’s find was no discovery at all: folding a piece of paper or cloth is the only way to reduce its surface area without tearing it. This knowledge, which men acquired in Neolithic times as they went about their occupations of guarding and burial, provided Dittborn with what he had long been searching for in his work: marks that would traverse his productions while being heterogeneous to them. And then those marks were there: the folds. In late 1983 the first airmail painting reached the world.