
Los Angeles
Allen Ruppersberg
ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Bergamot Station G1
2525 Michigan Avenue
September 12–October 19, 2009
Curated by Constance Lewallen
Once described by Allan McCollum as “a love letter to the ephemeral and to memory,” Allen Ruppersberg’s work has moved restlessly among media for more than forty years. He is now a hero to many younger artists, although this exhibition, titled “You and Me or the Art of Give and Take,” is his first major US museum show since 1985. It presents ten older collages and drawings along with two new large-scale installations. One of the latter, The Never Ending Book Part 2/Art and Therefore Ourselves, 2009, is a stage-like environment filled with more than fifteen thousand pages of images photocopied from volumes in Ruppersberg’s library, which viewers are invited to rummage through and make selections from to create their own unique “books.” Accompanying the show, a catalogue/artist’s book mimicking a 1950s travel guide features essays by curator Constance Lewallen and Greil Marcus.
— Liz Kotz