Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Susanne Figner. Text by Isabelle Graw, Chus Martinez, Alex Kitnick.
The latest project from artist and Harvard professor Stephen Prina (born 1954) takes as its starting point his birthplace of Galesburg, a small town in the Midwest. The town is portrayed indirectly, through objects such as books, cabinets, memorabilia and photographs, and through references ranging from Abraham Lincoln to John Cage.
Concerto for Modern, Movie, and Pop Music for Ten Instruments and Voice
Published by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Edited by Laura Fried.
For 30 years, Stephen Prina (born 1954) has enjoyed a simultaneous career as a visual artist and as an acclaimed musician, both under his own name and with The Red Krayola. Having kept his artistic interests separate from his musical pursuits for decades, Prina has now begun to synthesize the two endeavors. Presenting recent work in multiple media alongside his music for the first time, Modern Movie Pop pairs an artist-designed booklet, documenting his exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, with a live audio recording of the world premiere of his latest concerto, "Concerto for Modern Movie, and Pop Music for Ten Instruments and Voice"--a complex amalgam of his own pop songs and soundtracks. For this exhibition, Prina achieved the dovetailing of his art and music by suspending richly painted monochrome window blinds behind a carpeted video lounge, creating a "movable stage spectacle."
Published by Walther König, Köln. Text by Astrid Wege, Bennett Simpson, Karola Grässlin.
Describing Conceptual artist and musician Stephen Prina's work in 2004, the Harvard Gazette wrote, "Prina's artwork is full of unsuspected surprises, secret compartments that pop open to release compressed bundles of meaning or coiling strands of narrative." His work at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, for example, was conceived as "a traveling spectacle--a mini-Broadway-musical-on-the-road or circus," according to the artist. This concise retrospective volume presents work from 1979 to 2008, as well as installation views of Prina's recent one-person exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany. Born 1954 in Galesburg, Illinois, Stephen Prina divides his time between Los Angeles and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a professor at Harvard University. A member of the band Red Krayola and a solo performer, Prina is represented in New York by Friedrich Petzel Gallery.
Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Pop
Stephen Prina: The Second Sentence of Everything I Read Is You