Museum admission is free
galleries open today until 6PM
Hammer Channel

Watch 1,000+ talks, performances, artist profiles, and more.

Go to Hammer Channel
Collections

See 50,000+ objects, including prints, photographs, paintings, and more.

Go to Hammer Collections

Weekend notice: on Friday, April 24 the Hammer Museum will close to the public at 6PM and re-open at 7PM to college students only for Arts Party: Forever. On Sunday, April 26, plan ahead for street closures due to CicLAvia—West LA. Learn more

Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Stephen Prina, The Second Sentence of Everything I Read Is You: Mourning Sex
The Second Sentence of Everything I Read Is You: Mourning Sex, by Stephen Prina, 2005–7

Stephen Prina, Artist
The Second Sentence of Everything I Read Is You: Mourning Sex , 2005–7

Medium
Mixed-media installation: acrylic and acrylic enamel on linen, acrylic on plywood, acrylic enamel on wall, 9 Boston Acoustics™ Dsi265 speakers, Alesis™ ADAT-HD24 XR digital hard-disk recorder, 5 Samson® Servo 200 power amplifiers, Monster Cable™, Furman PM-8/E II power conditioner, Duratran™ on EFRA Lichtwerbung, ETC Source 4 Jr.™ spotlight, FLOR™ carpet
Dimensions
240 x 480 in. (609.6 x 1219.2 cm)
Credit Line
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Gisela Capitain. Image courtesy of Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (photo by Simon Vogel)

All the components of this work by Stephen Prina travel in crates that are transformed into benches and situated in the middle of the installation. A recording of a song composed and performed by the artist, with lyrics consisting largely of quotations from and about the late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres from a book edited by Julie Ault, plays through the sound system. The crates and carpet bear the stains and scuffs incurred through repeated movement in and out of storage and shipping to exhibition venues around the world. A meditation on memory and loss, the work also evokes ideas about emotion and influence, individual and collective experience, and how the perpetual interchange of expression and reception marks a definitive aspect of culture.