Cless has been collecting since he was a kid. Stamps first, then graffiti books, trading cards, fruit stickers, spray cans, skate decks, vinyl figures, tart cards, and more. His house is packed with it all—over 2,000 book titles (10% still sealed), albums in protective sleeves, objects organized and preserved with the care of an archivist.
This isn’t just accumulation. It’s how he survived his mother’s illness, how he made it through the pandemic, and how his collage practice took shape. The search calms him. The preservation grounds him. The collections form a three-dimensional collage he lives inside.
Here’s Cless, writing about collecting as illness, therapy, and religion.
Seek, Find, Collect! (Or sometimes, Find, Seek, Collect!) as therapy
For me, collecting is closely tied to keeping, treasuring, and accumulating. Honestly, I can’t give a precise answer, but it makes me feel good, really good, and I’m convinced it’s a form of therapy (even if at times I take it on with a certain controlled obsession).
As a child, I don’t think I was aware of what collecting really meant, although I do remember cutting out small cartoon characters from magazines and laminating them. Around that time, I also enjoyed drawing, and I had many sheets by Emilio Freixas, “Lessons in Artistic Drawing,” which I used as references to learn. I ended up having enough to start thinking I wanted them all, so I suppose that was a sign. That period was important to me, I still keep them, just like the drawings I made. There’s even a kind of 2.0 version of those little cut-out, laminated figures, this time with skate brand logos, which I stuck onto a Walkman I customized for my good friend Saúl back in ’94.
I started collecting stamps in 1989, when I was just a kid. At that age I didn’t have much money, but I put everything I had into them. I couldn’t afford to get everything I wanted, but I really enjoyed cataloguing what I did manage to find. A few years later, I came into contact with the world of graffiti. I was still young and broke, and if I wanted to paint or travel, I had to put certain things on hold.
Things got more complicated when I got my first job. I started to have a bit of money, and at the same time I discovered graffiti books. I remember perfectly the first book I bought and ladies and gentlemen, it happened again! I thought: I want every graffiti book out there. That moment was clearly much deeper and more defining, and even though I knew it was impossible, after 30 years of searching, I’m still not fully aware that I’ve managed to get everything that once felt out of reach, along with everything else that came with it.
Getting hold of all those copies wasn’t easy or quick, it was more like a daily practice that started to take shape around 2008 and really solidified from 2017, when I would come back home after visiting my mother in the hospital. During that delicate period, I would go through more than 35 links a day, publishers or specific books, checking the same title across different search engines and websites, even noting down prices and their daily fluctuations until they reached their lowest point. I especially remember around 2010, after finishing work, before going to eat, I would search for books and buy a copy as cheaply as possible, trying not to go over €5. It might sound unbelievable, but I was finding books for €1.53 or even €0.97 (plus shipping, of course) but I assure you, that’s how it was. Those were very difficult times for me, and I have to admit that searching, finding, and collecting became almost like a religion. Searching relaxed me, whether I found something or not, whether I bought anything or not. It kept me occupied, I learned, and it motivated me, making those moments feel a little lighter.
This was something I developed and came to understand much better during the pandemic, it was crucial for me. In 2020, when the pandemic broke out, I went through an overwhelming shock. In the years before, I had been developing my work as a collage artist, producing pieces fluidly and moving forward with a strong sense of confidence, but everything changed with the crisis. I couldn’t stop thinking about how fast the contagion was spreading across the world, and I began to fear for my life and above all, for my family’s. I couldn’t work, I was completely paralyzed, and I thought that if I didn’t do something about it, I wouldn’t be able to move forward. Fortunately, I remembered my stamp collection, which I had set aside back in 1992, and I picked it up again. I dusted off my profiles on eBay and Todocoleccion and opened up new paths of exploration. What started with small searches and early purchases quickly grew into reviewing thousands upon thousands of lots every day. It was both revealing and therapeutic. It grounded me and helped me see, with perspective, everything I had achieved up to that point, in what was an entirely surreal time. Regaining a sense of calm and reconnecting with my passion for stamps changed the way I collect, the way I see, observe, appreciate, learn and it ultimately transformed my work as a collage artist into what it is today.
I learned that preserving everything I had as well as possible was a fundamental part of the process, especially after seeing how things deteriorate over time, something I experienced firsthand in my early collage work. I realized that if I was investing so much time and money into something that meant so much to me, I had to take care of it, but maybe I took it a bit too far. Probably more than 10% of the books I own (over 2,000 titles) are still sealed, and for those that aren’t, I’m careful with how far I open them so I don’t warp their structure. Most of them still have their original sealed, or I’ve given them new protective sleeves, and sometimes, depending on the book, I even wear librarian gloves so I don’t leave any marks on the pages. I don’t just do this with books, I take the same care with other important collections, like stamps or trading cards, using double protection in those cases. In general, I try to take very good care of everything. I’ve built a bit of a reputation for it among family and friends, but I genuinely enjoy all these processes. For me, it’s something completely normal and natural.
By now, I imagine you’ve probably realized the seriousness of the situation, and maybe you’ve even wondered how I manage to live with all of this: books, zines, magazines, stamps and labels, trading cards, art and prints, T-shirts, spray cans, skate decks, vinyl figures and toys, photographs, records, fruit stickers, tart cards… and many more, all inside a house. I’ve been asking myself that same question for over 20 years, and even though I don’t really have the space and cardboard boxes keep piling up in the studio and throughout the house, everything coexists in perfect harmony, forming an overwhelming three-dimensional collage, deeply inspiring, that both shapes and defines my work.
Collecting: Illness and therapy (in equal measure).
“Save it, and you’ll have it.” It’s a mantra, no doubt, and a kind of religion too. It’s a reality I lean into, and one that feeds directly into my work. I can’t help it; I tend to keep things. I’ve been treasuring all kinds of objects for decades. Sometimes they’re small, seemingly useless things, but they hold a memory, a specific moment, at least most of them do. The problem is, there are so many of those moments that I can’t keep up anymore, but I keep going. Honestly, in these difficult and exasperating times we’re living through, combined with all I’ve experienced, I’m certain that one of the most important things in life is that sense of excitement, and anything that brings me happiness, stimulates me, teaches me something, or can be shared with others, enriches the soul. That matters deeply to me, because just like art in any of its forms, it makes my heart beat stronger and fills me with a real sense of happiness.
Learn more about Cless on TWS, his website or Instagram
