Untitled (City Limits)

1970 - Photography (Photography)

11H x 14W inches each

Allen Ruppersberg

year born: 1944
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: Cleveland, Ohio

Untitled (City Limits) is a series of five black-and-white photographs of road signs, specifically the signs demarcating city limits of several small towns in California. Taken outside Palmdale, Littlerock, Pearlblossom, Victorville, and Barstow, towns where the population does not exceed 20,000, Ruppersberg’s trip follows the outskirts of Los Angeles. As with many of his other photographic series, the artist here inserted into each view a constant element that disturbs the otherwise quiet scenes: a hand holding an open magazine. By pairing each road sign with magazines as diverse as Playboy , Look , Hulk comics, Arizona Highways or Rona Barrett’s Hollywood , Ruppersberg teases the viewer to find a connection between the two.


Like many of his peers in the 1960s, Allen Ruppersberg recognized art as existing not in the isolated realm of aesthetics, but as a practice with a clear political and critical potential, one inextricably immersed in an economic system. Ruppersberg took as source material diverse items stemming from a distinct American form of popular culture of the mid-twentieth century. However, it was perhaps his particular use of everyday rituals to explore different cultural mythologies and narratives that separated him from many conceptual artists of his generation. For a period between the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ruppersberg developed several series of photographs that privileged a certain kind of neutrality, stillness, and emptiness that resembled the seemingly authorless images of mass-produced postcards or calendars. But in his works the artist often hid distinct clues, like an unopened newspaper left on an unmade bed in a hotel room. In this series Ruppersberg was also interested in the suggestion of narrative or uncanny storytelling through the juxtaposition or sequential arrangement of images.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

Cyclope by Carlos Amorales
© » KADIST

For the last two years, Mexico-City based artist Carlos Amorales has been developing a series of works in relation to what he calls “Cubismo ideológico”...

Blindseye Arranger (Max)
© » KADIST

Brian Bress

2013

Blindseye Arranger (Max) (2013) features a greyscale arrangement of rudimentary shapes layered atop one another like a dense cluster of wood block prints, the juxtaposition of sharp lines and acute angles creating an abstracted field of rectangular and triangulated forms composed as if in a cubist landscape...

Interview with Lenio Kaklea
© » KADIST

Choreographer and dancer Lenio Kaklea introduces her 2017 solo piece A Hand’s Turn ...

Be Oblivion, in Disconnect
© » KADIST

Natasha Wheat

2011

Wheat’s work is built on a strong conceptual framework that weaves together commentary on social and political issues and the radical potential for change...

Studies of Chinese New Villages II
© » KADIST

Gan Chin Lee

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...

Mary Weatherford Revisits a 1957 ARTnews Profile of Painter Joan Mitchell
© » ARTNEWS RETROSPECTIVE

Mary Weatherford Revisits an ARTnews Profile of Joan Mitchell – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Alex Greenberger Plus Icon Alex Greenberger Senior Editor, ARTnews View All September 4, 2020 10:27am ©ARTnews In 1957, art critic Irving Sandler paid a visit to the studio of painter Joan Mitchell , an Abstract Expressionist known for her brushy images capturing nature...

Studies of Chinese New Villages II
© » KADIST

Gan Chin Lee

2019

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...

Shadows V, Set of 3
© » KADIST

Charles Gaines

1980

To make his series Shadows (1980), Gaines subjected 20 potted plants to a uniform procedure...

4 mourners on a mantel
© » KADIST

Gala Porras-Kim

2017

The graphite drawing 4 mourners on a mantel by Gala Porras-Kim is part of a larger installation and body of research, entitled An Index and Its Settings (Un Índice y Sus Entornos) , in which the artist reconsiders 235 ancient burial figures (from circa 200 BCE – 50 CE) from what is now Mexico’s Pacific coast that are part of the Proctor Stafford Collection held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)...

Adição por subtração - 4
© » KADIST

Marcelo Cidade

2010

Adição por subtração 4 (Addition by Subtraction, 2010) is an intervention into the white cube with both beautiful and intimidating results...

Studies of Chinese New Villages II
© » KADIST

Gan Chin Lee

2019

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...

Studies of Chinese New Villages II
© » KADIST

Gan Chin Lee

2019

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...

Dragoș Bădiță – Light Falls
© » THE RE:ART

Dragoș Bădiță - Light Falls - The re:art Dragoș Bădiță – Light Falls From February 3rd to March 17th, 2017, Anca Poterașu Gallery presented the solo show Light Falls by Cluj-Napoca based artist Dragoș Bădiță, who is also co-coordinator of Lateral ArtSpace ...

Adaptando la Carta #1, #2, #3, #4, #5
© » KADIST

Fabiola Torres-Alzaga

2013

Fabiola Torres-Alzaga plays with magic, illusion, and sleight-of-hand, fabricating installations, drawings, and films that toy with our perceptions...

Dorian, a cinematic perfume
© » KADIST

Michelle Handelman

2009

In Dorian, a cinematic perfume, video is used as a community gatherer, a tool to speak about particular subcultures, in this case the trans-gender drag queen New York community, past and present...

He counts the stars and call them all by name
© » KADIST

Robert Zhao Renhui

2014

Created during Zhao Renhui’s residency at Kadist SF in 2014, the photographic grid features a selection of some 6,000 members from single family of flies –hoverfly– identified over the last 25 years by Sacramento-based Dr...

The Drawings of Catriona Secker
© » HIGH FRUCTOSE

In her graphite drawings and paintings, Catriona Secker finds inspiration in biology textbooks and vintage natural history tomes...

Yu-Wen Wu Interviewed by Yutong Shi
© » BOMB

BOMB Magazine | Yu-Wen Wu Interviewed Necessary (Required) Cookies that the site cannot function properly without...

Title, Theme Announced for Sixth Aichi Triennale
© » ARTFORUM

Title, Theme Announced for Sixth Aichi Triennale – Artforum Read Next: ART BASEL REVEALS EXHIBITOR LIST FOR 2024 SWISS FAIR Subscribe Search Icon Search Icon Search for: Search Icon Search for: Follow Us facebook twitter instagram youtube Alerts & Newsletters Email address to subscribe to newsletter...

home, a temporary place
© » KADIST

Mithu Sen

2014

home, a temporary place by Mithu Sen is part of a project called AºVOID...