DE KOONING BY RICHARD PRINCE at the gagosian gallery, paris

Proclaiming his worship of Willem De Kooning, Richard Prince presents his exhibition of his de Kooning series at the Paris Gagosian Gallery, coinciding with his American Prayer at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Once working on images of the abstract expressionist de Kooning in books, stories began to emerge through Prince’s continuation of the de Kooning woman, for example, accompanied by a man’s fishnet clad groin, his tatooed hand smoking a cigarette. Vintage porn magazines, cut-out photographs, graphite and charcoal came to construct an Oediapal chaos. The series is continued in the next room, through large scale reproduction and painting. Using scraps of the sexual emblems of today, Prince forms a strange symbiosis with de Kooning, renouncing and blurring the lines where Willem de Kooning started and Richard Prince finished.

De Kooning by Richard Prince is on view until 21 May at the Gagosian Gallery, 4 Rue de Ponthieu, Paris. Photo and Text Sophie Pinchetti

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