Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London
020 7402 6075
Richard Prince: Continuation
June 26-
September 7, 2008

"I don't see any difference now between what I collect and what I make."

— Richard Prince,
New York Magazine

Richard Prince (b. 1949) is one of the world's most celebrated artists and one of its greatest artistic innovators. For this show Prince creates a uniquely personal exhibition of his work from his own significant artistic and literary collection, which he has selected to create an environment reflecting the Gallery's scale and location. The exhibition, which follows his recent retrospective, Spiritual America, at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, will be Prince's first major solo show in a public institution in the U.K.

Prince came to prominence in the 1980s through his celebrated series such as Cowboys, Jokes, and Hoods, that appropriate images from magazines, popular culture and pulp fiction to create new photographs, sculptures, and paintings that respond to ideas abut American identity and consumerism. Prince's images, now iconic themselves, are sourced from the artist's obsessive collection of pictures that began when he worked for Time-Life magazine in the 1970s and which continue to resonate deeply with our modern obsession with celebrity culture. These works have also been critical in challenging ideas of authorship and raising questions about the value of "unique" artwork.

Prince’s work has been among the most innovative art produced in the United States during the past 30 years. His deceptively simple act in 1977 of rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own ushered in an entirely new, critical approach to art-making — one that questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object. Prince’s technique involves appropriation; he pilfers freely from the vast image bank of popular culture to create works that simultaneously embrace and critique a quintessentially American sensibility: the Marlboro Man, muscle cars, biker chicks, off-color jokes, gag cartoons, and pulp fiction. While previous examinations of his art have emphasized its central role as a catalyst for postmodernist criticism, the Guggenheim exhibition and its accompanying catalogue also focus on the work’s iconography and how it registers prevalent themes in our social landscape, including a fascination with rebellion, an obsession with fame, and a preoccupation with the tawdry and the illicit.

Prince is, himself, a voracious collector of art, furniture, memorabilia, and books, which he houses in a variety of buildings alongside his own artworks. This installation is a direct dialogue with his spaces, mirroring the installation of Prince's work in his own buildings. His exceptionally diverse collection ranges from books and artworks by artists and writers to classic American "muscle cars." Paintings, photographs and sculptures from thoughout Prince's 30-year career, including new work created expecially for the exhibition, will be exhibited alongside pieces from the collection, including furniture, creating a wholly intimate and domestic setting in which to explore the work.

The exhibition is curated by Richard Prince and the Serpentine Gallery.

Richard Prince, The Salesman and the Farmer, 1989, Acrylic, silkscreen, charcoal and marker on canvas, 61 x 45.7 cm,
© 2008 Richard Prince.

Richard Prince, Untitled (girlfriend), 1993, Ektacolor photograph, Edition of 2, 152.4 x 101.6 cm, © 2008 Richard Prince.