RICHARD PRINCE — Untitled (band), A+Mbookstore / Le Case d'Arte, Milan, 2014

Published by A+Mbookstore and Le Case d'Arte, Milan, in 2014, this publication documents Untitled (band), a temporary wall work made by Prince for Le Case d'Arte the previous year. Black elastic bands, staples and fragments of newspaper were arranged directly across the gallery walls, producing spare, unstable geometries somewhere between drawing, installation and a deliberately impolite version of Minimalism. Once the exhibition ended, the configuration disappeared.

The book became its surviving form.

Photographs of the installation are accompanied by Prince's earlier 1980 text Decorating My Walls, collapsing more than three decades of his practice into a publication of just 46 pages: 1980 text, 1988 gallery relationship, 2013 intervention, 2014 printed object.

Prince first exhibited at Le Case d'Arte in 1988, returning in 1992 and again in 2013. The publication occupies exactly the unstable territory Prince repeatedly returned to: where documentation, reproduction, exhibition material and artwork begin to exchange places.

An unusually subdued entry in Prince's vast publishing practice. No Cowboys. No Nurses. No celebrity faces. Instead, a temporary work attached to a wall is transferred into photography and sent back into circulation as a book.

This copy remains unopened in its original shrink-wrap. The plastic has developed the slight rippling and compression visible in the photographs; the book beneath appears exceptionally well preserved. The wrapping is retained as issued.

A wall work disappeared.
Its document remained.

22 × 31 cm · 46 pages · Black-and-white illustrated publication · White boards · Original publisher’s shrink-wrap · Edition of 800 copies

Condition: Unopened in original publisher’s shrink-wrap. Slight rippling and compression to plastic as visible; book beneath appears exceptionally well preserved.