We are pleased to present Great Speckled Bird, Allen Ruppersberg’s first collaboration with the Gemini G.E.L. workshop.  Screenprinted onto a player piano roll perforated with a Southern hymn of the same name, the print spans over 20 feet, and has been divided by the artist into 4 panels for ease of printing and presentation. Great Speckled Bird captures a nostalgic vision of American cultural heritage: American folk songs, transcribed anonymously, are combined by Ruppersberg with vintage hotel stationary and screenprinted across the roll in a sequence according to Ruppersberg’s formal decisions.

Ruppersberg has consistently pushed the expressionistic resonance of conceptual, narrative and appropriated art. The use of collected hotel stationary recurs as a frequent component in Ruppersberg’s work and implicitly ties the narrative of his oeuvre to a peripatetic dissemination of Americana. Ruppersberg has been intrinsically tied to Los Angeles since the 1960s, and his influential presence among LA’s community of conceptual artists continues to grow. The subject of over 60 solo exhibitions worldwide, Ruppersberg currently has an exhibition at the Marc Selwyn Gallery in Beverly Hills, and has had previous LA exhibitions at the Margo Leavin Gallery, as well as at Greene Naftali in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and New York’s Whitney Museum and New Museum, among many others.