Richard Prince 1234 / instagram recordings
The American artist Richard Prince has become a predominant figure in contemporary art, building his career by appropriating pre-existing visual material. In 2015, he opened an Instagram account under the username richardprince1234, on which he posted new images every day but erased them a few hours later. So as not to miss any of this ephemeral content, the French artist Sébastien Girard used an app that enabled him to automatically save the stream of images on his computer. Two years later, Richard Prince’s Instagram account suddenly disappeared. However, thanks to his app, Girard preserved a unique collection of several thousand images now published in 12 chronological volumes entitled Richard Prince 1234 / instagram recordings. They are presented in a vinyl record sleeve bearing one of the 2664 collected images. Some 700 variant editions are displayed on the shelves of VHS, a record shop in Vevey.
