Richard Prince, Original (Installation View)

Richard Prince’s Original series is currently the subject of a new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, nestled at the gallery’s Upper East Side bookstore showroom, and using Prince’s ‘arrangements’ of soft-core adult novels with artworks created for their covers, showing the next step in the artist’s fascination with collecting, ownership and presentation.  An ardent, perhaps even obsessive collector himself, Prince often mines and unfolds worn and sometimes clandestine images, not only from vintage pulps, which serve for the selection here, but also from copies of influential literary pieces, a pattern the artist has studied throughout his career of media appropriations.  A devoted member of a group of artists who started experimenting with appropriation in the ‘70’s, Prince usually employs minimal alteration to his subject matter; rearranging, editing and sometimes even rephotographing what already exists. (more…)

Fulton Ryder, the secretive bookstore owned by artist Richard Prince, has announced via email that it will close its doors on Christmas of this year.  “Fulton Ryder was always meant to be an ephemeral space, an experimental venue for spontaneous creativity where things constantly changed and shifted,” says gallery head Fabiola Alondra. (more…)