Allen Ruppersberg: Poetry and Rearrangement

15.03.–15.04.2006

Allen Ruppersberg
Free poetry, 2005 - 2006
Printed banner, table with 22 boxes, containing stacks of Xeroxed pages with 22 different images and fingerprints in coloured ink

Allen Ruppersberg
Free poetry (Detail), 2005/2006
table with 22 boxes, containing stacks of Xeroxed pages

Allen Ruppersberg
Flashback Startover, 2001/2006
Xeroxed pages coloured with crayon, laminated
94,4 x 126,7 cm, 16 parts

Allen Ruppersberg
Spacebound, 2001/2006
Xeroxed pages coloured with crayon, laminated
94,4 x 126,7 cm; 16 parts

Allen Ruppersberg
False Eye Level, 2001/2006
Xeroxed pages coloured with crayon, laminated; table
94,4 x 126,7 cm; 17 parts

Allen Ruppersberg
Honey, I rearranged the collection ..., 2002
Silk screen prints, 9 parts, framed
each 74,1 x 80,4 cm

Allen Ruppersberg
Formal Invention, 2006
Silk screen print
96 x 125,5 cm, framed

Allen Ruppersberg
Slide Poems, 2004
2 x 80 slides, approx. 15 min

Allen Ruppersberg
Slide Poems, 2004
2 x 80 slides, approx. 15 min

From March 15 through April 15, 2006, Galerie Martin Janda is showing work by the American conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg. Ruppersberg (born 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 http://www.diacenter.org/ruppersberg/ ).

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