The postalero, as a form, is a light and mobile column, but the logic behind its structure is different: far from supporting the weight of the roof, it multiplies the vertical space suitable for the arrangement of elements with the minimum possible material. The proximity between the images that can be arranged on the protrusions of a postalero is determined by its structure, generally of an industrial cut, so the postalero will always impose its reason for symmetry and its postulation of constant order at the time of the encounter. As we were commenting in one of the meetings with the organizing team of El Postalero, some artists have arranged their works around the postalero, on the floor, because the volume of the works exceeded the small space that the structure reserves for each image. At the moment in which the placement of the proposed works remains subordinated to a diameter activated by the postalero, which is inferred in a more or less intuitive way, it reaches the competence of an enclave, of a sign, like the Christmas tree around which presents are arranged. Henry de Morant commented regarding the sphere of design that "the aesthetic quality of an object must correspond to its function and at the same time be derived from it." [1]. Given this initial proposal, we know that countless artistic objects and dynamics have been reserved a relationship of correspondence between aesthetic quality and a very different function, by virtue of the fact that said function consists, most of the time, in the fertilization of sensitivity. It will be interesting to check the treatment of other artists towards the postcard. How will they take advantage of it to extract from it an opportunity to impose the initial reading that their works require, and that they are not swallowed up by their display? And how will these works function once they are unchained from the postcard, if the artists are content to dispense with the subversion of its tree-like and marked structure? But, since we are asking questions, I consider it appropriate to notice the openness of the organizing team to the postcard becoming an opportunity for artistic intervention and whether it can fulfill this function at the same time as the more strictly expositive-commercial one that it has been exploring since its origins. 

The postman redirects me to another object with a very different function and effect, which is the standing lectern. Some bibliographical sources place the first examples in the Iberian Peninsula in the 9th century. [2]. Both are skeletons in a vertical position, but the standing lectern is designed for the elevation of a single object to at least chest height. Substituting for the hands of the acolytes, who are completely instrumentalized and their musculature subordinated to the dignity of the missal—what could elevate an object more than the subjugation of human beings to its use?—the standing lectern must be understood as providing human proportions to that object that requires them for its use: now the missal, the score or the image look directly into the eyes of the observer, or challenge his neck and chest. The standing lectern raises to a new exponent the power of the law that the deposited object proposes to the subject. By means of the same tool as the unicorn—the spindly extension—but with a different strategy—the missal is raised above the standing lectern to gain height, while the unicorn gains height with a horn whose only function is to distinguish itself—both produce the same effect: the gaining of prominence. 

The postcard-holder does not do this. Both the lectern and the postcard-holder multiply the opportunities for visibility of the images or objects placed on their protrusions, but in the postcard-holder there are multiple serial heights, so that the load of the elevation at eye and chest level is neutralized by the others. The postcard-holder concentrates attention in relation to the space it inhabits, but then operates in the opposite way internally by accommodating multiple visual stimuli of different sensibilities. The visual dynamic it initially arouses is, therefore, centrifugal, and incites glances by contrast: and only prudent observers, willing to isolate the objects perched along its body, will be able to enjoy its dignity and its power. The solitude of the postcard-holder can be understood as a symptom of what is superfluous, of what has been disdained and has not deserved the attention or the money of the buyer; while the solitude of the object on the lectern is the reflection of the function fulfilled and of its recognized rank of sacredness. Both structures have the ability to trigger in us the awareness that even the most stubbornly flat work of art has corporeality thanks to the way it rests on another body, because we can surround it and study it from various angles. This is a distinctive feature of the wall, which conceals this fact, and even more so of digitalisation and viewing on devices, which homogenise the qualities of the works. 

The suggestions of collectivity and regulated randomness of the postal worker, together with its centrifugal internal visual dynamics, are probably of greater interest to Espacio Lavadero than other forms of displaying works for sale. It is congruent with the distracted and hyperactive gaze of our time, crossed by superstructures that accommodate ramifications of patterns that hurt and affect each other. It may even be that El Postalero, as we know it today, is a practical and modest embryo that awaits its time to develop to more levels.