Allen Ruppersberg

• 15.03.–15.04.2006

From March 15 through April 15, 2006, Galerie Martin Janda is showing work by the American conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg.

Ruppersberg (*1944 in Cleveland, Ohio) is part of the first generation of artists in the USA whose artwork critically approached the means and methods of the mass media.
The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf recently put on a large show of his work (One of Many — Origins and Variants, December 2005 — February 2006); a selection of his artwork is currently on display at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

In his second personal at Galerie Martin Janda, Ruppersberg grapples primarily with different forms of language and poetry. Twenty-two boxes containing images and illustrations, copied out of children’s books and coloring books, are situated on a table. “Poetry should be made by all and not by one.” Visitors to the gallery may accept the invitation — inspired by a Lautréamont poem — to assemble their own poem with these images during the opening.
The two pieces exhibited on the wall, Spacebound and Flashback Start Over (2001/2006), also offer interaction possibilities: Ruppersberg once again takes up themes from childhood, in this case excerpted from a number of sources, including coloring books and illustration sample books. Images, for example of a family of piglets, are combined with text passages taken from tombstone engravings, and thereby arranged as new, bizarre stories. By wearing the large, laminated pages the exhibition-goers can put them in a different order. Ruppersberg also tells such a pictorial poem in False Eye Level (2001/2006), which is presented as giant book atop another table.

In a silkscreen series the artist focuses on the phenomenon of collecting, and especially of organizing and reorganizing a collection. The slogan Honey, I rearranged the collection … prefaces each work in his project The New Five Foot Shelf of Books, which began in 2001. Allen Ruppersberg is a collector of art, books and printed matter of all types (see also https://www.diacenter.org/ruppersberg/ ).

On the gallery’s upper level we are showing Allen Ruppersberg's Slide Poems (2004).