About
Most of what’s passing for information right now is total fiction. I try to turn the lie back on itself.
—Richard Prince
Gagosian is pleased to announce Richard Prince: Early Photography, 1977–87, at the 522 West 21st Street gallery in New York, opening on March 9, 2024. The exhibition, which was presented at the gallery’s Davies Street and Grosvenor Hill locations in London in 2023, features many of Prince’s iconic cowboy, girlfriend, and advertisement photographs, some of which have not previously been exhibited in the city. It also includes the complete series of The Entertainers (1982–83), a rarely seen set of manipulated photographs taken in the bars, clubs, and restaurants of New York’s Times Square that captures the location’s sleazy glamour. Archival material including writings by the artist and source material from his time in the tear-sheet department at Time magazine, some of which has not been shown before, will also be on view.
Collecting, chronicling, and repurposing examples of discomfiting mainstream humor alongside images from a variety of mass media, Prince chronicles the intersection of America’s vernaculars and subcultures in the construction of its national identity. In 1977, he began using a process of “rephotography” to appropriate shots from advertising and the lifestyle press, redefining the concepts of authorship and originality—an approach he would later extend to include social media. A conscious elision of the aims and techniques of traditional picture making, the technique allows Prince to redirect the authority of a visual referent. “When you put an already existing image in front of a camera,” he explains, “you know what you’re going to get. You’ve taken out the decisive moment.”
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Press
Gagosian
press@gagosian.com
Hallie Freer
hfreer@gagosian.com
+1 212 744 2313
Polskin Arts
Meagan Jones
meagan.jones@finnpartners.com
+1 212 593 6485
Picture Books: Percival Everett and Brandon Taylor
The second installment of Picture Books, an imprint organized by Emma Cline and Gagosian, presents author Percival Everett’s novella Grand Canyon, Inc. alongside Untitled (Original Cowboy), a photograph by Richard Prince. In celebration of the publication, Everett met with author Brandon Taylor to discuss the novella, the role of history in the writing process, and the similarity in methodologies for science and literature.
Richard Prince: Cowboy
On the occasion of the publication of Richard Prince: Cowboy, a major monograph on the artist’s preoccupation with the mythic American West, Lucy Sante tracks the archetype through mass media, advertising, and the art of Richard Prince to illuminate the cowboy’s enduring appeal.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2020
The Summer 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.
The Right Time
Natasha Stagg on influencers, the loss of the it-girl, and the “promotional life.”
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
Cast of Characters
James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.