Stephen Prina

As He Remembered It . 2011

photos: © Museum Associates/LACMA . + GALERIE GISELA CAPITAIN . Petzel Gallery

The origin of Los Angeles-based artist Stephen Prina’s installation As He Remembered It is a memory from the 1980s of walking down La Brea Avenue with fellow artist Christopher Williams. They saw a bright pink fitted unit by architect R. M. Schindler. The built-in desk had been taken out of its original context and displayed as a freestanding object. According to Prina, “it appeared to us as an amputated limb.”
Prina chose two houses built in Los Angeles during the early 1940s by R. M. Schindler and since demolished. Using surviving plans and photographs, he had copies made of the unit furniture, which Schindler designed to be arranged to follow the lines of the room. The resulting installation at LACMA consists of twenty-eight objects that Prina painted pink using Pantone Honeysuckle 2011 Color of the Year and restaged in a grid pattern.
LACMA