By Cody Elliott
Sean Fader is a multimedia artist living in New York who created a work titled Wishing Pelt. The set-up: Strangers would approach him in a gallery space, rub his exposed chest hair, and whisper a wish into his ear, as a multi-platform piece – it happened live, but was also recorded and photographed and put onto the Internet.
Richard Prince, the celebrated and controversial artist, printed and enlarged a screenshot of an image from Wishing Pelt that Fader had posted on Instagram. Prince then sold it through Gagosian gallery as part of a series of similar work entitled The New Portraits, complete with Prince’s actual Instagram comment. Gagosian is perhaps the largest gallery in New York, and this piece sold for $40,000. Fader replied to this piece by taking a copy of Prince’s work, generating a second panel with new comments by Fader, and displaying it as Backdrop for the Rebirth of the Collective Author (“There’s a Whole Lot of Authorship Going On.” – Richard Prince). He displayed this at Denny Gallery – for the price of $40,001.
(Image via SeanFader.com.)