Stephen Prina – He was but a bad translation

Opening on June,10, 7 pm

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The entire 1950s building by architect Wilhelm Riphahn, which houses the Kölnischer Kunstverein, will be engaged by the forthcoming Stephen Prina exhibition. Alongside an installation and a series of works that stem from Prina’s occupation with abstract painting the artist will show pieces from the work cycle The Way He Always Wanted It, among these a 35mm film and a video installation, centered around Ford House, Aurora, Illinois by the American architect, painter and composer Bruce Goff. Furthermore, a performance realized in cooperation with students of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and the Institut für Neue Musik will be given on selected dates in the theatre hall at the Kunstverein. For the performance a constant drone of a chromatic total will be heard and according to Prina’s specifications two musicians, using different instruments, will perform a duet based on a melody Goff programmed for player piano (pianola).

Translation processes between various artistic disciplines are key issues for the American artist who in his work continuously refers to other artists, architects, composers or filmmakers of modernity and pop culture. He uses methods of conceptual art in his contemplation of architecture and music or draws on musical and pop-cultural means and perspectives for painting. Herein he anticipates misunderstandings and disappointments which flawed and incomplete translation processes of cultural codes trigger in the audience. At the same time he firmly involves the spectator by his fascination with visual details and precise spatial settings. As suggested by the title He was but a bad translation. the artist includes himself in this game.

Due to his incessant development of conceptual and pop-cultural working methods Stephen Prina has since the 1980s become a pulse generating artist for the international art scene, and especially for Cologne, where for the first time he will be honoured with an institutional solo show at the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Stephen Prina was born 1954 in Galesburg, Illinois. He lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Los Angeles.

Filmscreening, cinema at Die Brücke, daily at 4.30 pm

Music performance, theatre hall at Die Brücke

Cooperation with the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and the Institut für Neue Musik

Concert
Stephen Prina and the Ensemble Garage

Concerto for Modern, Movie, and Pop Music for Ten Instruments and Voice
European premiere, world premiere in a revised version, 2011
Wed 29th June 2011, 8 pm

A cooperation project by ON – Neue Musik Köln and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Stephen Prina and the Ensemble Garage will present the Concerto for Modern, Movie and Pop Music by Stephen Prina in the theatre hall at the Kölnischer Kunstverein.
Beside his artistic career Prina received a musical education and has since the 1990s been a member of the experimental pop music band The Red Krayola. The Concerto for Ten Instruments and Voice which premiered in 2010 in St. Louis is based on the Concerto OP24 by Anton Webern but interjects the individual movements of the concerto with pop songs and compositions by Stephen Prina. Prina himself will sing and play the guitar. Akin to his other artistic works Prina bases the concert on a key composition of modernity and shows its influence on pop music.

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