Air de Paris

No Time Left To Start Again /2
29 October - 11 December. 2010

Air de Paris is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Allen Ruppersberg titled No Time Left To Start Again / 2.

Ruppersberg presents three new projects that focus upon the practice of collecting and the way in which we reconstruct and enliven narratives.

In the large installation, No Time Left To Start Again/ The B and D of R ‘n’ R , the artist adorns colorfully silk-screened pegboards—some revisiting the artist’s poems about music—with laminated color copies of record labels, album covers, found photographs of teenagers in alternative fashions of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and obituaries of rock and roll artists. Numbering over one thousand, reclaimed material that doesn’t fit onto the pegboards is stacked into boxes below, a visual reminder of the myriad of alternative narratives waiting at the periphery. The artist has also produced a compilation record of rock ‘n’ roll’s diverse musical influences and manifestations, forming an audio soundtrack to echo the visual journey taken across the pegboards.

In Spell for Creating a Familiar, Ruppersberg, as he has throughout his career, chooses to emphasize the participatory act of reading as a means of re-animation. Texts from a magic spell book are interspersed with tightly cropped images of miscellaneous miniature toys, presenting a partial narrative that can only be completed as the viewer attempts to decipher the photographs and read the spell aloud.

Similarly, L.A. in the 70s presents text and images to be assembled and interpreted by the viewer. A 1980s Los Angeles Times article on a once-mysterious restaurant, The Original Spanish Kitchen on Beverly Boulevard, is juxtaposed with early 1970s snapshots of small eateries, creating a refreshed narrative for the city’s social and culinary structure.

A large silkscreen of the same title layer images of Los Angeles landmarks and street scenes, with visual indicators of the city’s art community.

Ruppersberg’s work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (2009) and the Camden Arts Centre in London (2008). His work will be included in the upcoming group shows: The Last Newspaper, New Museum, New York (5 October 2010); Conjuring Houdini, The Jewish Museum, New York (31 October 2010); and in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont; and Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 organized by the Getty Foundation (Fall/Winter 2011).