Allen Ruppersberg
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles
30 March – 27 April 1996
Margo Leavin Gallery presents an exhibition of work by Allen Ruppersberg. The exhibition includes recent sculptures and drawings as well as two large-scale installations. In addition, there is a selected of earlier drawings and collages.
Throughout his career, Allen Ruppersberg has chosen language and the act of reading and looking as the focus of his art. The scope of his interest has ranged from High literature and its popular opposite to newspaper articles, movie posters and the world of advertising. The works presented in this exhibition evolved from his continued study of reading: the way society responds to the presentation of news and books, what constitutes a best seller, how society assigns a value to writing and the continuing need to reread and reinterpret history.
The subject of Allen Ruppersberg’s two large-scale installations in this exhibition is literature and its history. The first piece, Good Dreams, Bad Dreams, What was Sub-Literature?, addresses the mythology of the lost languages of both pulp literature, and its visual equivalent, the handlettered sign. This installation is a collection of signs hand-painted by local sign-makers, who have been given only the title of a book and the author’s name with which to make a sign. A fictional, visual lecture on the art of “dead signs” accompanies the hand-painted signs. The second installation is Low to High, which is an arrangement of books upon a hand-built staircase. Allen Ruppersberg has republished a set of books that were the five most popular novels read during 1920-40 in Britain, The Netherlands, Germany and Poland. Those four countries were involved in the 1944 Battle of Arnhem, which was one of the bloodiest conflicts of World War II. In republishing exact replicas of books dating from 1920-1940, Allen Ruppersberg’s installation acts not only as a historical marker, but also as a possible glimpse into the psyche of the soldiers and their countrymen before the onslaught of World War II.
In addition, this exhibition includes two recent bodies of work, Study for Bookmarks, and Study for Gravemarkers. Study for Bookmarks is a series of drawings of newspaper obituaries of men who died from complications of the AIDS virus. Study for Gravemarkers consists of bronze casts of pieces of rope tied into various nautical knots. These knots are intended to function as memorials and are installed randomly on the floor near the Bookmark drawings. Themes of memory and history connect these two seemingly disparate bodies of work.
This exhibition marks Allen Ruppersberg’s first one-person exhibition at Margo Leavin Gallery. The work of Allen Ruppersberg has been the subject of a recent exhibition at the Stichting De Appel in Amsterdam, and included in the “Cocido y Crudo” at Centre de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain and Dialogues of Peace at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In Los Angeles, Allen Ruppersberg’s works were recently exhibited in Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965 – 1975 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Important upcoming exhibition include one-person exhibition at Magasin in Grenoble, France and Portikus in Frankfurt, Germany as well as the important 1997 sited sculpture show in Münster, Germany.
MARGO LEAVIN GALLERY
812 North Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069
