Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Pop
January 22 - April 11, 2010

To download press release, click here.
For more information on Stephen Prina's Concerto for Modern, Movie, and Pop Music
for Ten Instruments and Voice, click here.

Simultaneously riffing on classic conceptualism and modernism’s formal tropes, American artist Stephen Prina has for thirty years developed a singular and multifaceted practice that encompasses painting, installation, photography, sound, and film. At the same time, he has had an acclaimed career as composer and pop musician—releasing over a dozen music albums under his own name and with The Red Krayola. Having kept his artistic interests separate from his musical pursuits for decades, Prina has begun to synthesize the two endeavors. Presenting recent work in multiple media alongside his music for the first time, Modern Movie Pop considers the role of reprisal in art-making.

The exhibition’s namesake is shorthand for Prina’s newest musical score, a complex homage that combines his own pop songs and soundtracks. Featuring distinguished musicians from Saint Louis and the artist on guitar and vocals, Concerto for Modern, Movie, and Pop Music for Ten Instruments and Voice (2010) premieres at the Contemporary on March 18. Prina—who often resurrects the motifs of previous projects—has long taken the position that history is always present. Suspending richly painted monochrome window blinds alongside a white carpeted video lounge as “movable stage spectacle,” Prina orchestrates a taxonomy of his art that, at its heart, reveals an attention to the consonant spaces of painting, film, and music.

The exhibition is organized by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

images: Stephen Prina, Modern Movie Pop, 2010. Installation views at the Contemporary
Art Museum St. Louis. Photos by David Ulmer

Special thanks to Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York.
General support for the Contemporary’s exhibitions program is generously provided by the Whitaker Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; William E. Weiss Foundation; Nancy Reynolds and Dwyer Brown; Missouri Arts Council, a state agency;
Regional Arts Commission; Arts and Education Council; and members of the Contemporary
Art Museum St. Louis.