dedication piece
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During the second half of the 1960s, Jiří Valoch leaned fully into conceptual thought. He abandoned works’ aesthetic quality and their aspect of originality in favor of their impact as communicational structures. Alongside photography, typescript, and drawing, he also began using other reproductive technologies—original stamps bearing the words “Time,” “Memory,” and “Do it yourself,” the printing technologies of the dry transfer sheet (a predecessor of the temporary plotter) and, not least, that of photocopying, to which he had access through friends who worked in a printing workroom. His “Dedication pieces” make a theme of the act of exchange and sharing, and they also illustrate the fact that his 1970s works were embedded in an international artistic network and were frequently both dedicated and delivered by mail to specific people. In effect, a distinctive attitude toward and perception of conceptual art were being built. J.P.