Rayyane Tabet and Jay DeFeo: 3,626 Postcards: An Untimely Conversation with Rayyane Tabet and Jay DeFeo

For An Untimely Conversation with Rayyane Tabet and Jay DeFeo, Tabet creates an immersive, site-responsive installation bringing together two collections—the artist’s own postcards and those of the late artist Jay DeFeo.

When Tabet moved to San Francisco in 2017, he visited DeFeo’s archives in Berkeley out of curiosity, mostly knowing of her monumental work, The Rose (1958-66). Tabet discovered DeFeo’s extensive postcard collection that mirrored his own. With the DeFeo Foundation’s collaboration, he began cataloguing her postcards and discovered unexpected affinities: shared images, overlapping interests, and uncanny resonances. While DeFeo is no longer living, through these postcards, an untimely conversation began.

Throughout the process, questions arose that resurface in the exhibition: What is left behind after the artist or artwork leaves our presence? Can a singular artwork contain a world of relationships? What is in the center of an artists’ practice, and what is in the periphery? What meaning can we gather from the margins? Can an object or image stand-in for a memory? When does a conversation become a collaboration? Through his immersive composition, Tabet aims to expand our understanding of artistic processes and intergenerational exchange through unconventional means.