Skip to content
Stephen Prina - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Stephen Prina (b. 1954, Galesburg, IL)

Stephen Prina is an American artist, musician, and composer, born in 1954 in Galesburg, Illinois. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts where he is a professor at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) at Harvard University. Prina received his B.F.A. from the Northern Illinois University and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts.

Prina works in a variety of media including musical performances. Each piece is related in some way and develops in a series of long-term projects that he frequently rearranges and re-presents in different exhibition and associative contexts.

Stephen Prina’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions worldwide. Solo exhibitions include English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2020); galesburg, illinois+, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles; Stephen Prina, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2017) ¡HOLA! ¿QUÉ TAL?, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2014); Carve Out a Space of Intimacy, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2011); Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Pop, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2010); Stephen Prina, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2009); The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden (2008); The Queen Mary, Petzel Gallery, New York (2006); Gaylen Gerber with Stephen Prina, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2002); and To the People of Frankfurt am Main: At Least Three Types of Inaccessibility, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2000), among others.

Prina’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Familienbande, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2019); Double Lives: Visual Artists Making Music, MUMOK, Vienna (2018); Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2016); Take it or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Outside the Lines, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2013); This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2012), traveled to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Von realer Gegenwart, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2010); Yokohama Triennal, Yokohama; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); Oh Girl, it’s a Boy!, Kunstverein München, Munich (2007); Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? Positionen der Farbfeldmalerei, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden; Los Angeles, 1955-1985, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006); Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; The Power Plant, Toronto; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; in capital letters, Kunsthalle Basel (2002); Adorno. Die Möglichkeit des Unmöglichen, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main; Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe (2001); Departures: 11 Artists at the Getty, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2000); Crossings: art to see and to hear, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (1998); Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1992), among many others.

His work can be seen in public collections at the Tate, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

“Regardless of each particular work’s guise and form, they all seem to concern the articulation of the resulting resonances and multiple overtones of difference in a contextual flux. The ostensible subject of Prina’s work is the ways the work of others is culturally contextualized, though importantly and sometimes literally, Prina’s own voice emerges in their midst.”

Eichler, Dominic, “Point Counter Point”, Frieze, 2009

Career Highlights

Stephen Prina - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Installation view, Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992

1954 Born, Galesburg, Illinois

1977 BFA, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb,Illinois

1980 MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valenica, CA

1992 Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York

1999 Push Comes to Love, Petzel, New York

2004 Retrospection Under Duress, Reprise, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge

2008 The Second Sentence of Everything I Read Is You, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden- Baden, Baden-Baden, DE (catalogue)

Monochrome Paintings, Haubrok Works, Berlin

Stephen Prina - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Installation view, English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2020

2010 Modern Movie Pop, (live performance) Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis

2012 Wade Guyton Stephen Prina, Petzel, New York

2013 As He Remembered It, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angele

2014 ¡HOLA! ¿QUÉ TAL?, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

2015-2016 galesburg, illinois+, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, DE; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen, CH

2018 galesburg, illinois+, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles

ArteBA La Rural, Buenos Aires

2020 English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, MX

Installation view, English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2020

Installation view, English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2020

Installation view, galesburg, illinois+, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, 2016

Installation view, galesburg, illinois+, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, 2016

Installation view, galesburg, illinois+, Petzel, 2016

Installation view, galesburg, illinois+, Petzel, 2016

Installation view, As He Remembered It, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2013

Installation view, As He Remembered It, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2013

Stephen Prina
Installation view, Monochrome Paintings, Haubrok Works, Berlin, 2008

Installation view, Monochrome Paintings, Haubrok Works, Berlin, 2008

Installation view, Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992

Installation view, Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992