Jim Joe and Lewy Put Up Nearly 200 Hand-Drawn Postcards in NYC Show

Reviving the lost analog art in ‘Letters to the Editor’ at Market Gallery.

Summary

Artists Jim Joe and Lewy lift the veil on a new collaborative show, 'Letters to the Editor, now on view at Market Gallery until November 15

The show spotlights the duo's creative relationship in the form of 186 illustrated postcards, started by Jim Joe and completed by Lewy across the country

Jim Joe and Lewy want you to get off your phone. Both artists made their names in graffiti, and for their new exhibition at New York’s Market Gallery, they’re scaling down, keeping it analog, taking us back to the forgotten art of writing letters.

Dubbed Letters to the Editor, the show features 186 illustrated postcards from the last few years. The works were first drawn by Jim Joe, and later mailed to and completed by Lewy. Some pieces take form as exquisite corpse-like creatures, while others, like a head turned away to reveal a lizard-shaped undercut, dip into surreal visions of everyday life. Just a few steps beyond the drawings, housed in a rooftop shed-turned-gallery, is a large-scale mural depicting a rather whimsical street scene.

The two are some of the best-known, unknown artists, with an inspiree roster spanning Virgil Abloh, Drake, and Ye. We last saw Jim Joe and Lewy’s works together on the set of Louis Vuitton’s A/W 2019 show, which took form as a graffiti-authenticated, pre-mega-developed Manhattan scene. Before that, they premiered 800 collaborative works with their 2016 show, Piece of Dirt.

The exhibition arrives with a limited-edition catalogue by Red Lebanese and Autonomous Media Organization, exclusively available at Market through its run. In an essay included in the book, Dumar Do More Nov 925 writes: “The pair utilize an old technology. Writing letters and sending them via USPS seems avant-garde today after the last 25 years of being trained to text, email, and slide into DMs instead of writing letters the way our elders taught us to.”

“This project says a new Dark Ages is upon us, suppressing, erasing and pressing reset while the technology Gods are toying with us, dunking on us, posterizing us,” he continues. “We stuck looking like Michael Jordan watching John Starks & Rembrandt Space Jamming on him. We are frozen like a deer in headlights as the world moves on without us powerless, paralyzed, played out 16-year-old toys.”

Letters to the Editors is now on view until November 15. Check out Market Gallery’s website to book your visit.