Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince’s ‘Helter Skelter’ Is Pure American Grit

Summary

• American artists Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince will share the stage in Helter Skelter, an upcoming exhibition at Fondazione Prada’s Venetian venue, timed with the Venice Biennale
• The show brings the two artists together for the first time and will present over 50 works across photography, video, sculpture, installation and painting
• A collaborative zine reflecting the artists’s creative exchange will also be on view

When we talk about appropriation art, Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince are some of the first figures to come to mind. Known for their visual riffs, both artists get at the edges of American popular culture, embracing all of its myths and perversions.

With the Biennale around the corner, Fondazione Prada will present a duet showcase of work by Jafa and Prince at its Venetian palazzo. Curated by Nancy Spector, Helter Skelter is built around thematic overlaps and juxtapositions between both artists’s practice, such as authorship, race and image-making, threaded together by a shared concern for the contemporary visual landscape in all its good, bad and ugly.

Over fifty works spanning photography, video, sculpture, installation and painting will be on view, alongside a collaboratively produced zine reflecting the pair’s creative exchange during the show’s development.

“The term ‘Helter Skelter,’ reinvoked here as the title of this exhibition, contains all the complexity and messiness of its misuse in popular culture,” the foundation wrote. “It is an unruly readymade, selected by the artists to disrupt expectations, a perfect expression of the composite nature of this two-person show.”

While working in similar modes, Jafa and Prince map distinct landscapes within American culture: Jafa’s work explores the intricacies and complexities of the Black experience, namely within music and film, while Prince’s practice mines a critique and fascination of white masculinity and the darker underbelly of national identity.

“They are both image scavengers,” Spector explained. “Seeking no prior permission, they dip into the overflowing reservoir of visual culture — from the swamps of social media to the annals of print journalism, from advertising’s hall of mirrors to Hollywood’s celluloid archive — to take whatever they want and convert it into art by choice alone.”

“They are quintessentially American artists in subject and medium, literally enfolding objects and images from the empirical world into their works, subsuming them as readymades — Trojan horses, as it were, designed to disrupt established belief systems.”

Helter Skelter will be on view at Fondazione Prada in Venice from May 9 through November 23.

Fondazione Prada Venice
Calle Corner, 2215,
30135 Venezia VE,
Italy