AZADE
Opening reception 28/08
Richard Prince
Gangs
Gladstone Gallery, New York 2021
Artist’s book
Hardcover, 112 p.
34 × x 23.4 cm
Prince claims that “gang” was the word used by the photo lab in the early 1980s for the technique of gathering slides into a printed photograph. They “ganged” images together under his direction, creating grids of taped slides that were transposed into printed photographs. But the connotation of the word “gang”—a group of young people united by a single purpose, driven by turf wars, violence, and illicit activity—is too vivid, too evocative, to bypass here. There is a defining ethos of criminality in Prince’s work.
He jailbreaks the art world, does what he wants, and we, as his audience, reap the benefit of his renegade vision.
Interview by Nancy Spector.
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