"Life Imprints by Lieve Prins: The Copier as Camera"
2000-09-30 until 2001-01-07
California Museum of Photography
Riverside, CA, USA

Life Imprints by Lieve Prins: The Copier as Camera showcases work by one of the pioneers of copy art, or as Prins calls it, electrography. Prins employs a Canon 200 Color Laser Copier to create large-scale art works pieced together from separate photocopies of, among other things, the human figure, birds, earth, leaves, fish and squid. Through her art, Prins has sought to create a specific image-language for expressing love, intimacy, vulnerability, erotics, sensuality and communication.

Born in Belgium, Prins studied interior design at age 16. Later, she moved to Amsterdam where she became involved in the art movements of the early seventies. She became involved with photocopy art when she saw her daughter's hand resting on a photocopier in a department store. Drawn by the machine's capacity to render texture and color, Prins began to explore its potential for art making. Prins appreciates in particular the photocopier's spontaneity and speed. She also points out that in traditional photography everything is reduced to a negative, consequently; you lose the sense of the real size of the subject. She points out, With copy art, all attention has to be focused upon the body part, then you build up a fantasy image with these parts.

Although not widely seen in North America, Prins' artwork has been exhibited throughout Europe and published in popular and art periodicals. Prins' image, After the End is featured as the cover art for the CD Fully Completely [ECD] by the popular Canadian band, Tragically Hip. Vibrant and powerful, Prins' artwork was recently described by critic Jules Marshall as, a sumptuously surreal mix of body parts and hermaphroditic imagery: birds, earth, and leaves in one; in another, water, fish, squid that look like breasts, and breasts that look like fruit.

by Cynthia Morrill, Ph.D., from the Fall 2000 Foto/Text.

IMAGE:
Lieve Prins
Luna in Devotion (detail)

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in United States