From 20th October to 23rd January 2016, Galerie des Galeries hosts American artist Alex Prager for her first solo exhibition in France. On this occasion, the photographer and filmmaker will present some of her most recent works, including her latest film “La Grande Sortie“, a commission from the Paris Opera Ballet.
Alex Prager is known for intricately staged works that draw on the drama of the Golden Age of Hollywood films to explore uncanny elements of today’s individual and social life. Los Angeles, where she was born, has been a huge source of inspiration in her work, both in terms of subject matter – fantasy, isolation, tribulation – and in the way she utilizes the movie industry in order to create her films and photographs.
Alex Prager by Elsa Janssen, Director Galerie des Galeries
I discovered Alex Prager’s work at FIAC in 2013. Strolling down the aisles, I stopped at her picture, entitled “Crowd # 5 (Washington Square West)”: first, the color: green; then the composition, the window and finally, those characters. Where are they going? Who are they? Three of them stand
out: a man with bewildered eyes, a blond lady stopped in the middle of the crowd, towards the center, a woman looking into the window, looking for us.
The latter character is Alex Prager’s sister, who appears in most of the artist’s series. When Alex Prager started working as a photographer in 2007, she would ask relatives to pose for her. Though inspired by street photography and reality, Prager also entertains a passion for fiction: indeed, her childhood was spent in Los Angeles, where she currently lives. Her reliance on two opposing sources of inspiration certainly goes a long way toward explaining the power behind her imagery.
The film “Face in the Crowd”, her most iconic work to date, was directed like a feature film: soundstages, dedicated teams, 350 extras; the script, however, had not been written out. Each actor, having been dressed, made up and turned into a character by Prager, had a personal story to tell. Singular, unique stories, specific to each individuality composing a crowd. Stories that affect us, evoked by characters of intriguing appearance.
Prager casts the majority of her extras from among her relatives and their network; constantly on the lookout for new models, she sifts through casting agency portfolios, looks up profile pictures on social media or randomly scouts out interesting faces.
The ambiguity of reality thus lies at the heart of Alex Prager’s artistic research. In other series, the artist stages it by resorting to our collective memory. One of the shots from her series “Compulsion” (2012) shows a woman hanging on to an electric wire. Implausible as it seems, it is a direct reference to one of the photographs in the “Tragedy” series, taken in the 1970s by the photographer Enrique Metinides, famous for his ability to capture live images of accidents or crimes in Mexico.
Even more surprising is her determination, knowhow and technical expertise. On set, she will scare her actors by screaming or spraying water at them so as to get the kind of reaction she expects. Surreal though her shots might appear, they always capture an element of reality: for art’s sake, Prager will go to such lengths as literally plunging a car into a pool of black water or filming the ocean from a helicopter.
Alex Prager’s precision as an art director and keen observation of crowds, the lyricism of her projects and her empathy for women immediately resonated with Galerie des Galeries, a cultural venue located at the heart of Galeries Lafayette. Thus we are delighted to welcome Alex Prager on her first solo exhibition in France.
EXHIBITION
Alex Prager
From 20th October to 23rd January 2016
Galerie des Galeries
1st Floor Galeries Lafayette
40 bd Haussmann
75009 Paris
France
http://www.galeriedesgaleries.com
