Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
Exhibited
Beverly Hills, Gagosian Gallery, Richard Prince – Check Paintings, February 25 - April 9, 2005
Literature
S. Watson, A. McDonald, eds., Richard Prince – Check Paintings, Beverly Hills, 2005, p. 50
Catalogue Essay
While I was browsing for autographed photographs, I noticed that memorabilia websites also sell cancelled checks. I started thinking about how much information there is on a personal check. Most fans collect them just for the signature, but I really like the way they're presented on a plaque, with the cancelled check under the person's photo. That looked kind of nice…. I had this idea that I would take twenty checks and paste them on a canvas to make check paintings. I liked the idea that an invitation for the show might suggest that I'm doing something with grids or geometry. But they're real checks! R. Prince in conversation with Eva Prinz taken from www.indexmagazine.com
For more than three decades, Prince's universally celebrated practice has pursued the subversive strategy of appropriating commonplace imagery and themes – such as photographs of quintessential Western cowboys and "biker chicks," the front covers of nurse romance novellas, and jokes and cartoons – to deconstruct singular notions of authorship, authenticity and identity.
Starting his career as a member of the Pictures Generation in the 1970s alongside such contemporaries as Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo and Sherrie Levine, Prince is widely acknowledged as having expanded the accepted parameters of art-making with his so-called "re-photography" technique – a revolutionary appropriation strategy of photographing pre-existing images from magazine ads and presenting them as his own. Prince's practice of appropriating familiar subject matter exposes the inner mechanics of desire and power pervading the media and our cultural consciousness at large, particularly as they relate to identity and gender constructs.