Sarkis, "réserves sans retour" — CAPC Bordeaux invitation card, 1980

Sarkis, Réserves sans retour — CAPC Bordeaux invitation card, 1980
£40 — shipping and handling included

A period invitation card for Sarkis's Réserves sans retour, issued in relation to the CAPC-organised exhibition at the Base sous-marine, Bordeaux in 1980. More than an announcement, the card functions as a small operational document: part invitation, part directional device, part residue of an exhibition staged inside a former German wartime structure not yet fully absorbed into the language of culture.

Printed card, 15 × 10.5 cm. Deep red recto with the title set in black script: Sarkis "réserves sans retour." The verso is given over to information and cartography: capc / Entrée n°7 / Hangar / quai de Bacalan / Tél. (56) 44.16.35 / Centre d'Arts Contemporains de Bordeaux, alongside a printed street map locating the Base sous-marine in relation to CAPC and the city. That map is one of the more compelling features here. It situates the exhibition not simply in a venue, but within an urban and historical field. The card does not just announce a show; it diagrams access to it.

The exhibition belongs to an important moment in Sarkis's trajectory, when questions of memory, displacement, architecture, and historical charge became inseparable from the work itself. It also belongs to an early phase in the cultural reuse of the Bordeaux submarine base, before such conversions became a familiar curatorial model. In that sense, this piece registers a shift: from military infrastructure to exhibition site, from logistics to art.

A spare and unusually intelligent piece of French art ephemera, with strong graphic presence and a quietly conceptual use of printed navigation. Scarce. Light wear from age; overall very good.