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Dan Graham
Allen Ruppersberg


To Tell The Truth, 1973

For this exhibition Dan Graham has selected video and graphic works related to his performances from the 70s. In response to his proposal, Allen Ruppersberg shows a photo series from 1973, named To Tell The Truth.

In 1973, Allen Ruppersberg made many photographic works in which a series of images were set side-by-side in sequence, suggesting stories. These works often dramatize the differences between a reader’s or writer’s misrepresentation of events and the confusions that can occur between what we normally describe as reality and fiction.

In the photo series, To Tell the Truth (1973), Ruppersberg plays himself as a blindfolded man wearing a sleeping mask (significantly) and sitting at a table. In each new image, a different object appears before him on the table, and below the image a verbal narrative progresses—but the viewer comes to recognize that each object is being described incorrectly, as if some deadly slippage between the imagery and the text were developing further in each frame. When a bottle of ketchup appears on the table, for instance, the caption reads, “A pitcher of water”. A handgun appears along with the caption “A sawed-off shotgun”. When the man lifts his blindfold and raises the handgun to his head, the caption reads “An Argument”, and in the final frame, as the man kills himself, the caption reads, “A Murder”.

Dan Graham
Allen Ruppersberg


To Tell The Truth, 1973

For this exhibition Dan Graham has selected video and graphic works related to his performances from the 70s. In response to his proposal, Allen Ruppersberg shows a photo series from 1973, named To Tell The Truth.

In 1973, Allen Ruppersberg made many photographic works in which a series of images were set side-by-side in sequence, suggesting stories. These works often dramatize the differences between a reader’s or writer’s misrepresentation of events and the confusions that can occur between what we normally describe as reality and fiction.

In the photo series, To Tell the Truth (1973), Ruppersberg plays himself as a blindfolded man wearing a sleeping mask (significantly) and sitting at a table. In each new image, a different object appears before him on the table, and below the image a verbal narrative progresses—but the viewer comes to recognize that each object is being described incorrectly, as if some deadly slippage between the imagery and the text were developing further in each frame. When a bottle of ketchup appears on the table, for instance, the caption reads, “A pitcher of water”. A handgun appears along with the caption “A sawed-off shotgun”. When the man lifts his blindfold and raises the handgun to his head, the caption reads “An Argument”, and in the final frame, as the man kills himself, the caption reads, “A Murder”.