Press release

Allen Ruppersberg
"Where's Al?"
October 20 1996 - January 5 1997


Allen Ruppersberg was born in Cleveland (USA) in 1944. He studied at the Chouinard Institute in Los Angeles until 1967. He lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.
The exhibition at Le MAGASIN offers a unique opportunity to discover the work of this major artist, who is a paradigmatic figure of Californian Conceptual Art.

The exhibition at Le MAGASIN

Where's Al?
This exhibition presents more than 50 pieces from 1968 to 1996, set in different areas of Le MAGASIN, and in particular in the Galleries, the "Rue", and the Cafeteria.
With some of the artist's major works acting as a thread, the exhibition encompasses the wide variety of media used: drawings, paintings, installations, films, posters, videos...

By making use of the diversity of Allen Ruppersberg's production and the "elasticity" of the developmental aspect of his works, the show at Le MAGASIN proposes a non-chronological itinerary, but one which illustrates different types of exhibitions.
The MAGASIN Gallery space is divided into six rooms, each one referring to a different installation style. The "Spare Clean White Space Room", installed in a very minimalist way, the "Spontaneous all over Scatter Room", the two "Traditional Room" (with drawings and paintings), the "Group Show Theme Exhibition" installation, and the "Total One Singular Work" installation, as Allen Ruppersberg himself defines them.

The exhibition spills over into the "Rue", using the curved wall for the piece titled The Novel that Writes Itself (1996), a work reconstructed for the occasion, which consists in a wall covered with posters. These posters are also available as multiples, and on sale at MAGASIN Bookshop.

In the cafeteria, will be shown life-size silhouette-photos of Allen Ruppersberg and various elements coming from two works: "Al's Cafe" and "Al's Grand Hotel".

The Allen Ruppersberg approach

The issues raised by Allen Ruppersberg's approach-language- memory, history, artistic identity, and a questioning of cinematographic and photographic rhetoric are all themes which recur in the areas of concern hallmarking today's young generations.

Allen Ruppersberg's work broaches these issues, in an on-going interplay of mergers of fiction and reality. His work is firmly rooted in vernacular American culture, from which he derives his basic materials: popular books, objects, films, photos, posters, excerpts from TV programmes, architecture. He subtly poses the question of incorporating art in day-to-day-life.

Ruppersberg defines himself as a reader: “I don't see myself as an author, I'm a reader and I project my voice into works so that others may in turn read".

Based on books, newspapers, letters, and TV programmes, which he collects, cuts, copies and transposes on to other backgrounds.
For example, The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1974), a handwritten transcription of Oscar Wilde's book on to a series of 20 canvases, and Remainders: Novels, Sculpture, Film (1991), an installation with a hundred books placed on a table, the books having been made by Ruppersberg based on a popular typology (news items, morality tales...) Not forgetting the montages presented in such installations as How to Remember a Better Tomorrow (1989), made by using excerpts from TV news programmes, educational broadcasts, and films.

These works also indicate a particular interest in history, for they compare "major historical goings-on" and "minor history", and highlight the codes which make up our collective memory.

Under the influence of the Hollywood cinema of the 1950's, which developed the clichés of ideal America, the artist contrasts this myth with the day-to-day reality of the period.

The autobiographical dimension is a recurrent feature of his work, raising the question of the author's identity. The figure of the artist is often in evidence, but at the same time shrouded in doubt, and withdrawn. Allen Ruppersberg is often masked in such photographic series as The Fairy Godmother (1973), and as such he directs himself like a fictitious character. Where's Al? (1972), the work after which this exhibition is titled, is a dialogue in quest of the author, mingling writing and souvenir-photographs.

The first exhibition major retrospective catalogue will be published to mark this exhibition
format: 210 x 280 mm, approx. 100 b/w colour photographs, bilingual texts (French-English)
• contributions by Catherine Queloz and Dan Cameron
• photographic documentation
• writings by Allen Ruppersberg
• a descriptive chronology of Allen Ruppersberg 1967-1996 (biography, bibliography and photos).