FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424 Fax. (310) 276-7430
Richard Prince: Women
February 19 - March 20, 2004
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 – 6:00 PM
Opening reception: Thursday, February 19, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Regen Projects is pleased to present Richard Prince’s “Women.” This exhibition will be the first show in which Prince addresses a single topic, “Women,” and draws from his own body of work over the last twenty-five years to elaborate on his subject. Work has been chosen from the early photographs, “Gangs,” “Entertainers,” “Fashion” photographs, “Girlfriends,” joke paintings, “Adult, Comedy, Action, Drama” photographs, a new “Spiritual America #3,” publicity works, as well as work from his most recent series, the “Nurse Paintings.” Some of the works on view are never before released artist proofs from Prince’s collection. An artist book, also titled, Women, is being published on the occasion of this exhibition.
Richard Prince became known for working with the appropriated image. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Prince gained attention for re-photographing images found in magazines he came across while working in the tear-sheet department of the Time Life building. Since then, Prince has continued to mine the field of popular images from the mid-century kitsch of pulp novel covers, to the language of low borscht-belt comedy, to the stylings of the celebrity headshot. Prince is a connoisseur of American culture, drawing from the American collective unconscious. His work celebrates with a deadpan sincerity the beauty of consumer culture’s visual triggers, propelling the cycle of distance and desire.
“To feminist critics, Prince’s work on women, if they concede a critical component in it at all, is at best evasive, putting on exhibit what oppresses women but never condemning it. While that charge is partially true, Prince’s work on women is so unsettling—indeed, so weird—that it can’t be taken as mere regressive display, especially when seen in the context of his other concerns. Rather, Prince marshals his penchant for ambiguity, his acute selection of images and his calculated display of them into a complex matrix of causes and effects that he sets up for maximum impact: to create a kind of “provocation” analysis. While infuriating his audience he also confronts it with sexual stereotypes that seem excessive and exotic: small-time “entertainers,” a sexualized child, the infamous biker chicks. But he also mines the source of that exoticism and exploitation—and finds its origins right next door. What Prince’s work suggests is that the cultural constructions of both the “good girl” and the “bad” spring from a common source. That’s the site of his inquiry and his iniquity.””
(Carol Squiers, “Is Richard Prince A Feminist?” Art in America, November 1993)
Richard Prince was born in 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone. He lives and works in upstate New York. Prince's work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally in museums and galleries. He has also produced numerous artist books, and there are several monographs devoted to his work.
An opening reception for Richard Prince will be held on Thursday, February 19 from 6:00-8:00 PM at the gallery. For further information please contact Shaun Caley Regen or Lisa Overduin at the gallery (310) 276-5424.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION:
Gillian Wearing March 27 – April 24, 2004
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424 Fax. (310) 276-7430
Richard Prince: Women
February 19 - March 20, 2004
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 – 6:00 PM
Opening reception: Thursday, February 19, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Regen Projects is pleased to present Richard Prince’s “Women.” This exhibition will be the first show in which Prince addresses a single topic, “Women,” and draws from his own body of work over the last twenty-five years to elaborate on his subject. Work has been chosen from the early photographs, “Gangs,” “Entertainers,” “Fashion” photographs, “Girlfriends,” joke paintings, “Adult, Comedy, Action, Drama” photographs, a new “Spiritual America #3,” publicity works, as well as work from his most recent series, the “Nurse Paintings.” Some of the works on view are never before released artist proofs from Prince’s collection. An artist book, also titled, Women, is being published on the occasion of this exhibition.
Richard Prince became known for working with the appropriated image. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Prince gained attention for re-photographing images found in magazines he came across while working in the tear-sheet department of the Time Life building. Since then, Prince has continued to mine the field of popular images from the mid-century kitsch of pulp novel covers, to the language of low borscht-belt comedy, to the stylings of the celebrity headshot. Prince is a connoisseur of American culture, drawing from the American collective unconscious. His work celebrates with a deadpan sincerity the beauty of consumer culture’s visual triggers, propelling the cycle of distance and desire.
“To feminist critics, Prince’s work on women, if they concede a critical component in it at all, is at best evasive, putting on exhibit what oppresses women but never condemning it. While that charge is partially true, Prince’s work on women is so unsettling—indeed, so weird—that it can’t be taken as mere regressive display, especially when seen in the context of his other concerns. Rather, Prince marshals his penchant for ambiguity, his acute selection of images and his calculated display of them into a complex matrix of causes and effects that he sets up for maximum impact: to create a kind of “provocation” analysis. While infuriating his audience he also confronts it with sexual stereotypes that seem excessive and exotic: small-time “entertainers,” a sexualized child, the infamous biker chicks. But he also mines the source of that exoticism and exploitation—and finds its origins right next door. What Prince’s work suggests is that the cultural constructions of both the “good girl” and the “bad” spring from a common source. That’s the site of his inquiry and his iniquity.””
(Carol Squiers, “Is Richard Prince A Feminist?” Art in America, November 1993)
Richard Prince was born in 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone. He lives and works in upstate New York. Prince's work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally in museums and galleries. He has also produced numerous artist books, and there are several monographs devoted to his work.
An opening reception for Richard Prince will be held on Thursday, February 19 from 6:00-8:00 PM at the gallery. For further information please contact Shaun Caley Regen or Lisa Overduin at the gallery (310) 276-5424.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION:
Gillian Wearing March 27 – April 24, 2004