Allen Ruppersburg

Art Brokerage: Allen Ruppersburg American Artist: b. 1944. He 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. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ruppersberg graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles, California. 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 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, and is recognized as a seminal practitioner of installation art, having produced works includin 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. Ruppersberg's philosophy is 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.