Stephen Prina, ‘As he remembered it’ (2011)

The point of departure for As He Remembered It is a memory from the 1980s, shared with artist Christopher Williams, of a fitted unit by architect R. M. Schindler that is taken out of its original context, painted, and recontextualized as an independent object.

To bring this personal anecdote to the Hauptraum of the Secession, Prina chose two now-demolished houses built in the early 1940s by R. M. Schindler in Los Angeles for Hilaire Hiler and Mrs. George (Rose) Harris. Using surviving plans and photographs, he had copies made of the fitted units, resulting in 28 objects that were then used as supports for monochrome painting—Prina painted them pink using “PANTONE Honeysuckle 2011 COLOR OF THE YEAR”—and restaged in a specially developed grid pattern in the Secession’s Hauptraum.