Allen Ruppersberg: WILL THE REAL ALLEN RUPPERSBERG PLEASE STAND UP
@ The Art Institute of Chicago
111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
Opening Wednesday, September 29th, from 6PM - 7:30PM
For over forty years, Allen Ruppersberg’s conceptually based practice has reconsidered and re-presented texts, songs, narratives, photographs, and memorabilia culled from American vernacular culture. Influenced in the early 1960s by the Beat Generation and California-based Pop artists, Ruppersberg was first recognized for a 1969 work entitled Al’s Café, a diner offering menu items such as “a small dish of pine cones and cookies.” Interested in notions of collection and consumption, Ruppersberg over the years has formulated installations from his personal archive, a vast array of early to mid-twentieth century ephemera—including postcards, record albums, snapshots, obituaries, comic books, sheet music, calendars, and instructional films. The artist explains, “I try to find things that are on the verge of disappearing so I can resuscitate them, use them so that they are present again.” Known for inviting viewers to participate in his work and for utilizing alternative distribution channels, Ruppersberg recently turned his 2001 installation The New Five Foot Shelf into a web-based collaborative project with Dia Beacon. Appearing like an unearthed time capsule filled with the artist’s influences and sources, on the site viewers can read entire books, peruse nearly 800 pages of texts and images, and explore his former studio.
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