Allen Ruppersberg: Then and Now

Special Exhibition

Sunday, July 1–Sunday, December 2, 2018

Location: 010 Focus Gallery
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery

*1400 West 25th Street at Detroit Avenue, Cleveland, OH* (detail), 2018. Allen Ruppersberg (American, b. 1944). LED light box with Duratran film, vinyl wallpaper. Photo © The Cleveland Museum of Art. Courtesy the artist, Greene Naftali, New York, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Featured Art

About The Exhibition

Cleveland native Allen Ruppersberg (born 1944) pays homage to his hometown in this new body of work. The illuminated photographs were taken from the vantage point of billboards across Cleveland—from the roadways along Lake Erie and the steelyards to the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. These billboards no longer deliver commercial messages, but rather offer the viewer unseen perspectives of the city—that is, what the billboard “sees” from up above. The wallpaper behind the photographs shows the massive steel structures supporting each billboard, connecting the commonplace urban forms to Cleveland’s industrial past.

Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.