LOS ANGELES, CA.- Kopeikin Gallery is presenting its second exhibition with New York based artist Amy Park in which she has recreated all 53 pages of Ed Ruscha’s famous artist book, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip,” on the books 50th anniversary! The exhibition changes the way these images have been historically viewed, removing them from their original context as fairly crudely reproduced black and white pages and presenting them as large scale stand alone watercolors. The exhibition opened Saturday April 23rd. This exhibition is free and open to the public.

Ed Ruscha’s iconic artist’s book “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” takes the viewer on a scene-by-scene tour of both sides (viewed on the top and bottom of each page) of a mile and a half stretch of Los Angeles’ famous Sunset Boulevard. By constructing the book as a pull out measuring 292 inches long, the effect given is akin to what someone might experience today by using Google street view – although Ruscha’s image stitching was much more casual than those of the seamless Google cameras.

Inspired by Ruscha, Amy Park reinvigorates “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” by recreating every page from the book in a large-scale watercolor format. With each work installed end-to-end, the book is transformed into a 97-foot long immersive experience that encircles the gallery and the viewer simultaneously. This immersion overcomes the physical limitations of the book and enables one to see the project in its entirety. With the introduction of a larger scale, the exhibition can be viewed physically, image-byimage, step-by-step, walking around the gallery, mimicking the experience of walking down the Sunset Strip itself.

Today’s Sunset Strip is not the same as the one photographed by Ruscha 50 years ago. The modern strip is full of billboards, bright lights, and hoards of tourists. The boulevard shown in the book is quite opposite: modest and unpopulated. Working with a document from a time of low “strip mall” architecture, apartment buildings, trees and concrete, Park utilizes watercolor and a monochromatic palette to build on the collage quality. In some instances, this creates areas of unexpected abstraction not found in the Ruscha version.

Amy Park was born in Warren, Ohio and received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She lives and works in New York City. Her work has been featured in prominent publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Morning News Magazine, San Antonio Express News, The Artist’s Magazine, Design Milk, Glasstire, and many others.

Her work has been added to public and private collections such as The Microsoft Corporation, Fidelity Investments, The Cleveland Clinic, Kimberly Clark Photo Archive, Deloitte & Touche, and The Drawing Center’s Artist Archive for the Museum of Modern