Publicity Photo Collection Suggests All Is Not Glossy

Imagine a family photo album put together by someone whose closest relationships and fondest memories do not involve friends and relatives but stars and celebrities he's never met. This gives you an idea of what it's like to visit Richard Prince's disturbingly poignant exhibition at Regen Projects, where the New York artist has framed publicity photographs in clusters that resemble the pages of a blown-up scrapbook.

Alternating waves of disdain and pathos roll over a viewer who spends more than a few moments with these cheap glossies. At one level, they represent a pathetic retreat from the trials and tribulations--and satisfactions--of real relationships with real people in the real world. In the fantasyland they map, time stands still: Beautiful people don't live happily ever after as much as they leave the drudgery of everyday life behind, becoming larger-than-life-size myths whose every gesture is loaded with significance--at least for adoring fans.

The interior lives of most adults, however, are not stuck in adolescence. Being pragmatic people, Americans have very little sympathy for such shameless escapism. We look down on individuals whose lives are consumed by mass-produced fantasies.

At the same time, Prince's collection of autographed pictures sends a chill down your spine. His series recalls what often emerges in the aftermath of school shootings, when newspapers publish evidence that paints sad pictures of lonely misfits who suffered silently before lashing out violently.

The obvious difference between his art and the profiles that follow such frequent tragedies is that no newsworthy violence precedes Prince's cataloging of his supposedly private fantasy life. As a work of art, its relationship to reality is ambiguous. As an artist, Prince is both the observer and the observed, the journalist and the story, the psychoanalyst and the patient.

His compilation of photos is less a self-portrait than an incisive sampling of America's fascination with celebrity. Where the ancient Greeks had their gods, we've got movie stars, pop stars and supermodels.

Individual works are often organized by oddly modern archetypes. In the category of bare-chested men appear Val Kilmer, Ozzy Osbourne, Sid Vicious and Sylvester Stallone: a foursome who wouldn't be seen dead together. Other categories include men on motorcycles, women on motorcycles, models in cowboy hats and vixens in swimming pools. One of the most touching works depicts artist Cindy Sherman, master of disguises, sitting beneath Raquel Welch, Xena the Warrior Princess, Carrie-Anne Moss (from "The Matrix") and a forgotten starlet from the 1970s.