We managed to get to Al Ruppersberg’s exhibition “You and Me or the Art of Give and Take” at the Santa Monica Museum on its last day. My favorite work was a wonderful two-part book drawing Twins, which is in Mike Kelley’s collection. There was another stunning piece in which viewers were invited to rearrange laminated panels on a giant pegboard to “tell the story they wanted.” There were images and texts relating to punk rock and old Americana. On the other side of the pegboard wall was a “Never Ending Book,” featuring images collaged on the wall and, in boxes resting on colorful sculptures, color-print-out of some of the images that you could take home. (We loved the idea of The Never Ending Book, Part 2…ha!) The entire installation was gorgeous and everything was embued with Ruppersberg’s generous humor.

There is a wonderful article on the exhibition here, with great installation shots.

Kelly Mark, Litany (2009)

Etched aluminum foil
24” x 24” x 1/2” approx
Private Collection

“Every swear word, & combinations of swear words, I could think of written onto aluminum foil and then framed in reverse.”

via kellymark.com (p.s., no relation)

From the Aluminum Foil Series which includes: Litany, All My Stuff, My CV, My Friends, & My Address Book

Kay Rosen, 9/10 (1998-99)

installation view of Kay Rosen: Lifeli[k]e, at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

via kayrosen.com

Ed Ruscha, from his current exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London

via art-it:

John Baldessari, Terms Most Useful in Describing Creative Works of Art, 1966-68. Acrylic on canvas; 114 x 96 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

via xtraonline

Baldessari’s major retrospective opens this week at the Tate Modern

Poem by F. T. Marinetti

“The leader of the Futurists was F. T. Marinetti, a poet, novelist, and manifesto-writer. At about the same time that Boccioni was painting streets entering the house, Marinetti was experimenting with parole in libertà (“words in freedom”), poetry made from words thrown about the page, poetry composed with type, lines, and the occasional drawing. Stéfane Mallarmé and Guillaume Apollinaire had experimented with placing words all over the page before him, but Marinetti innovated in his simultaneità, simultaneity. It’s impossible to read this poem in any definitive way: what order should these words and phrases be read in? The impression that Marinetti seemed to be trying to provoke was of a lot of people yelling at the same time, though the title of his poem suggests that it’s meant to be a letter that a gunner at the front sent back to his lover. But Marinetti’s mark-making doesn’t represent the words that the gunner says: instead, the words present the sounds that the gunner hears.”

from if: book A Project of The Institute of the Future of the Book

Paola Pivi, Have you seen me before? (2008)

Abjection.

Tan Lin, Eleven Minute Painting

Reading Module v. 0.1 (dub ver.)

Courtesy Penn Sound

File under Polyphonics: An entry comparing an amateur recording of children saying “Happy Birthday Pat,” with Raymond Quesneau’s Exercise in Style, in which he tells the story of a simple incident in 99 different ways (dream, narrative, anagrams, spectral, passive, telegraphic, etc.). Be sure to listen to the recording!

From Steve Roden’s excellent blog Airform Archives.

Just got the new catalogue on Piero Manzoni, edited by Germano Celant and published by Gagosian Gallery and Skira Publishers. It is a beautifully produced, highly substantial book that positions Manzoni within his rightful context. What to do when commercial galleries are producing books of the same caliber of scholarship that museums strive for? Buy it.