Stephen Prina

Born in 1954, in Galesburg, Illinois, Prina received a BFA from Northern Illinois University in 1977 and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1980.[3] At CalArts, his fellow students included Mike Kelley, Sue Williams, Tony Oursler and Jim Shaw.[4] In 1980, he attended Thomas E. Crow's class on Courbet and Manet at UCLA.[5]

Prina's work includes drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video and film. In Exquisite Corpse, a series begun in 1988, he set out to make a painting of the same size and shape as every painting recorded in a 1969 catalogue raisonné of Manet's works.[6]

Prina is also a composer and musician who has interpreted works by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Sonic Youth, Steely Dan and many others.[7] He taught at Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, from 1980 until 2003. In 1994, he offered a much-discussed course about filmmaking in the 1980s and focused the class on Keanu Reeves as the actor had appeared in a diverse set of films that each exemplified a specific style; the course prompted stories in The New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar.[8] Prina has been a professor at Harvard since 2004.[9]

Solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted in museums throughout Europe and the United States including Spruth Magers, Los Angeles, US (2018); Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2017); Museum Kurhaus Kleve (2016); Vienna Secession (2011); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaeno, Seville (2008); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; the Art Institute of Chicago (2002); MAMCO, Geneva (1998); Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1992); and The Renaissance Society, Chicago (1989).[10]

He has participated in documenta IX, the Venice Biennale XLIV, and the 51st Carnegie International.[11]

Prina has also been a willing collaborator, having co-produced significant exhibitions and projects with artists Wade Guyton, Mike Kelley, the band Red Krayola and curator Susanne Ghez at The Renaissance Society.[12][13][14][15]

Prina is represented by Petzel Gallery in New York, Maureen Paley in London, and Capitain Petzel in Berlin.