“Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History” at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is a great introduction to the artist for the uninitiated, and an interesting retrospective for those familiar with the American conceptual artist. 

Still from the video courtesy of the Contemporary

Sean Landers: "Dancing with Death"

Landers and Prina

When: Through April 11

Where: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 3750 Washington Blvd.

Information: 314-535-4660, www.camstl.org

 

A series of videos present Landers alone in front of the camera, in what look to be private confessionals and maudlin performances — it’s what Landers does best: reflect on himself reflecting on himself. The wall works are similarly confessional, comprised of hand-written stream-of-consciousness narratives that give us a glimpse of what it’s like to be Sean Landers, fresh out of art school and trying to make a name for himself.

“Improbable History” provides a glimpse into the art world of the early 1990s and Landers’ strategic negotiation through it, while it also presents a sustained style of diaristic writing that has all but disappeared in this age of tweets and blogs.

Prina's 'pop'

Stephen Prina’s “Modern Movie Pop” features different, ongoing projects intersecting in a spare, elusive exhibit.

Prina’s engagement with the American architect Bruce Goff has developed into a film, scenes of which are shown in three simultaneous projections — each at a different scale and pitched a different angle, evoking the skewed geometries of some of Goff’s architectural work.

Photographic stills from the film are intermingled with Prina’s watercolors, and exhibited in the Contemporary’s Performance Gallery along with window shades of the artist’s design. The exhibition is characteristic of Prina’s work in general: highly conceptual, and hard to pin down, as it is never finished, only continuing.