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Indepth Arts News:
"What’s Wrong - Open the Door..."
2001-04-27 until 2001-06-02
Northern Illinois University Art Gallery in Chicago
Chicago, IL,
USA United States of America
The title of Stephen Prina's installation, What's Wrong - Open the Door...., is taken from the English subtitles from every 41st frame of a one-minute segment of dialogue in Robert Bresson's 1977 film The Devil, Probably. Shortened here for the purposes of this exhibition, the title in its entirety details actions surrounding the main character's first suicide attempt - a failed bathtub drowning.
The installation consists of 35 framed panels of layered text and photographic images that illustrate the film sequence, coupled with specific phrases that reference coincidences and occurrences, like We Represent Ourselves to the World, a statement exactly 35 units long with spaces, and It was the Best He Could Do at the Moment, the title of an earlier project by the artist. What's Wrong? Open the Door.... is part of a body of work entitled Retrospection Under Duress that has been exhibited 4 times previously in Los Angeles, New York, Cologne and Berlin. Each time the work is exhibited, Prina decidedly removes several panels from the ordered sequence and hangs them in a separate space, creating new words from the chosen frames, like L.O.V.E. (Los Angeles) or H.O.P.E. (New York).
Stephen Prina, an alumni of Northern Illinois University, has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and has been included in both the Carnegie International and Documenta. Recent exhibitions include two solo shows at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York and Galerie Ghislane Hussenot, Paris and group exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Prina's conceptual installations continue to receive critical attention in major publications including The Los Angeles Times, Artforum and Art in America, among others.
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