Allen Ruppersberg, Reading Standing Up and The Book Circus (detail), 2004-2008, Courtesy Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp and greengrassi, London, Copyright the artist, Photo: Damian Griffiths.

Allen Ruppersberg, Reading Standing Up and The Book Circus (detail), 2004-2008, Courtesy Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp and greengrassi, London, Copyright the artist, Photo: Damian Griffiths.

Allen Ruppersberg, Reading Standing Up and The Book Circus (detail), 2004-2008, Courtesy Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp and greengrassi, London, Copyright the artist, Photo: Damian Griffiths.

Camden Arts Center
Arkwright Road
+44 (0)20 7472 5500
London
Allen Ruppersberg
September 26-
November 23, 2008

Allen Ruppersberg’s first solo show in a public gallery in London is based on "Literatura de cordels" — pamphlets produced by travelling poets and writers in Brazil. ‘Literatura de cordels’ roughly translates as "Stories on a string," these simply made booklets contain folk stories, poems and songs and are illustrated with wood cuts.

It coincides with the exhibition by Wallace Berman (1926-1976), who was a huge influence on Ruppersberg as well as other artists and poets emerging from the legacy of the Beat generation in the 1960s.

For this exhibition Ruppersberg has produced his own versions of "Literatura de cordels." These pamphlets are hung from the ceiling over a red, black and white floor piece — Reading Standing Up (2004). The text in the floor is made up of oppositions — us/them, left/right, text/margin, Italy/France, compelling you to read aloud and form your own rhythm and sounds.

Ruppersberg transforms Gallery 3 into a room for reading, recalling Camden Art Centre’s former life as a library. 

Throughout his life he has collected thousands of books, postcards, photographs, magazines, slides, posters, as well as industrial and educational films from 1931-1967. Ruppersberg uses these items as source material reflecting his interest in the cultural mythologies, narratives, and common truths of everyday life.

Born in 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio, Allen Ruppersberg is one of the first generation of American Conceptual artists that changed the way art was thought about and made. His work includes paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, installations, and books.

Ruppersberg graduated with a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (now California Institute of the Arts) in 1967. During his early years in Los Angeles, he began significant relationships with John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, William Wegman, and Allan McCollum. He participated in the groundbreaking 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, and is recognized as a seminal practitioner of installation art, having produced such influential works as Al's Cafe (1969), Al’s Grand Hotel (1971) and The Novel that Writes Itself (1978). Since the late 1960s, his work has been the subject of over sixty solo exhibitions and nearly 200 group shows, and can be found in permanent collections of museums internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Foundation de Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, among many others. Career highlights include participation in the Whitney Biennials (1970, 1975, 1991), Documenta V (1972), Lyon Biennale (1997), and Sculpture Project Münster (1997).[2] In 1985, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles organized a major exhibition of Ruppersberg's work, which subsequently traveled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in New York.[3] Exhibitions include Frac Limousin, Limoges, France (1999);[4] Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1998); and Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (1997). Ruppersberg lives and works in New York, NY, and Los Angeles, California.

Ruppersberg'a philosophy was to use language as a means of expression in its own right. He drew on all the different sectors of the mass media and the consumer society from a critical viewpoint.

Allen Ruppersberg, Reading Standing Up (detail), 2004-2008, Courtesy Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, Galerie Micheline, Szwajcer, Antwerp and greengrassi, London, Copyright the artist.