Mermaid Culture. Doose's Danish background baggrund is often seen in his motifs like here where two different - but very characteristically Danish - mermaids are framed by the Danish flag. 

Delayed Progress Report

A flap of something intensely green is instantly catching the eye - stealing the attention from the other mail items of the day. There is mail from Torben Doose! To be on his mailing list is a spe-cial experience to the eye. Never is he sending a postcard or an envelope without dressing it up as a work of art.

It has always been that way. Already as a child Torben Doose (born 1966) sent colourful envel-opes and collages to pen pals all over the world from the moors of Jutland. Today he is sending them to friends, family, even to the royal house, and not least to the network of mail artists from Paris where he has earned a living as a dancer and pictorial artist since 1987. The posted letter is central to Torben Doose's work: The hand-made letter and picture bears witness of time, of taking time to communicate, time for reflection and ab-sorption. A "delayed progress report" is what he
calls it. 

Two sides of the same matter. There are no such things as front and back on Torben Doose's Mail Art cards. On one side is the painting, on the other side postage stamps, postmarks, words, and coloured sections turn into new pictures.  

Studies of Attitudes

Torben Doose works with gouache, Indian ink, pastel, and collage techniques. His abstract pic-tures show a sense of playful curiosity towards the figures and spaces emerging from the colours. In his figurative pictures the female form is a recurrent theme. With a sharply sketched, black and angular contour he reproduces different types of modern, self-aware women posing as ease for the behold-er.

The slight and angular figures emerged during his years at the Parisian school of fashion, Studio Ber-cot. Here Doose realized that rather than creating fashion he was interested in interpreting it and the world in which it was made. His line enhances the lean catwalk models and their angular movements and tones down the feminine. Far more than being portraits of women the pictures appear as studies of types and attitudes from modern city life. 

Traces from Journeys

Since 1999, Torben Doose has been participating actively in the network of mail artists who have since the 1960's used the international postal sys-tems to exchange ideas and art. Doose's works are passing through many hands before it ends up in those of the receiver. The journey is a significant part of the work because the many hands leave traces. It is a private item of mail and a public work of art at the same time when it is sent out in the world and put to use.

Such an unpretentious conception of the work of art is central to mail art where the intention is among other things to avoid the established, commercial artistic world in order to make the art accessible and tangible to everybody.

The Exhibition "Torben Doose - Mail Art" can be seen in Café Hovedtelegrafen from 28th November 2006 to 4th March 2007.