Stephen Prina: As He Remembered It

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Stephen Prina: As He Remembered It as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. initiative. As He Remembered It charts the influence between California modernist architecture and contemporary art. With this installation, Prina explores issues of site-specificity, personal history, and the unreliability of memory.

The origin of Los Angeles-based artist Stephen Prina’s installation As He Remembered It is a memory from the 1980s of walking down La Brea Avenue with fellow artist Christopher Williams and seeing in a storefront a bright pink fitted unit by architect R. M. Schindler. The built-in desk had been taken out of its original context and displayed as a freestanding object. According to Prina, “it appeared to us as an amputated limb.”

Prina chose two houses built in Los Angeles during the early 1940s by R. M. Schindler and since demolished. Using surviving plans and photographs, he had copies made of the unit furniture, which Schindler designed to be arranged to follow the lines of the room. The resulting installation at LACMA consists of twenty-eight objects that Prina painted pink using “Pantone Honeysuckle 2011 Color of the Year” and restaged in a grid pattern.

Although As He Remembered It was conceived in Los Angeles and is intertwined with the history of the city, this exhibition marks the first time this ambitious work will be seen in L.A. Until now, the work has only been on view at the Secession in Vienna, Austria.

Stephen Prina: As He Remembered It is curated by Jarrett Gregory, Assistant Curator, Director’s Office, LACMA.

Image credits:

Installation view, Stephen Prina, As He Remembered It (detail), 2011, Los Angeles County Museum of Art © Stephen Prina; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Petzel Gallery, New York. Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA

Installation view, Stephen Prina, As He Remembered It (detail), 2011, Los Angeles County Museum of Art © Stephen Prina; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Petzel Gallery, New York. Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA

Installation view, Stephen Prina, As He Remembered It (detail), 2011, Los Angeles County Museum of Art © Stephen Prina; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Petzel Gallery, New York. Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA

Installation view, Stephen Prina, As He Remembered It (detail), 2011, Los Angeles County Museum of Art © Stephen Prina; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Petzel Gallery, New York. Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA