Image: Mark Moore Fine Art, Los Angeles
Mark Moore Fine Art has announced the private resale of two 2007 works by British artist Kim Rugg from her acclaimed ‘Comic Book’ series. Both pieces use vintage superhero comics as their starting point, but replace conventional reading with a painstaking process of tearing, rearranging and reconstructing printed newsprint. Availability is subject to prior sale, and the prices may change without notice.
The works are ‘Until You Talk’, 2007, and ‘Death of Superman’, 2007. ‘Until You Talk’ is made from reconstructed newsprint and measures 11 by 24 inches (27.9 by 61 centimeters). It is offered framed for $5,000. ‘Death of Superman’ consists of torn and reassembled printed newsprint paper in three parts, each measuring 10 by 12 inches, with an overall dimension of 30 by 12 inches (76.2 by 30.5 centimeters). The framed price is $7,500.
According to the announcement, the two works are particularly associated with vintage Batman and Superman comic books. Rugg’s interventions preserve elements including the original material, shapes, typography, colors and page layouts while disrupting the images and text that normally carry the narrative. The resulting objects are described as three-dimensional comic books, retaining the visual language of the source material while making its original function difficult or impossible to use.
Rugg’s practice is characterized by the deconstruction of familiar objects into minute fragments and their subsequent reorganization according to systems that are not determined by the original object’s purpose. Her materials have included newspapers, magazines, maps, postage stamps, product boxes, sweaters, wallpaper, furniture and cereal boxes, as well as comic books. The gallery’s account describes this process as a way of stripping away an object’s initial meaning and allowing new meanings to emerge from its material and formal qualities.
The works also reflect Rugg’s interest in the relationship between images and their signifiers. By altering or eliminating legibility, her constructions slow the act of looking and turn printed matter from a transparent vehicle for information into an object that must be examined in its own right. In the case of the comic-book works, familiar characters and stories remain present through fragments of color, lettering and composition, even as the narrative sequence is interrupted.
Rugg received an MFA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in London. The announcement states that her work is held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation in California; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Honolulu Museum of Art; the Norton Museum in Florida; and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others. It also lists exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Nettie Horn Gallery in Manchester and P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York.
Mark Moore Fine Art’s announcement does not describe a public exhibition or an institutional presentation of the works. It identifies them as available from a private collection through the gallery, with taxes, tariffs, shipping and any viewing expenses additional to the listed prices.
