A bucking horse, a mound of intertwined people, some weary, while others kiss or faint, a peaking mountain in the background… No, we are not looking at a romantic painting from the 17th century, but a work by Alex Prager, a renowned American photographer and director based in Los Angeles. If the dynamic composition and the expressive faces are similar to “Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix; we are quickly brought back into another reality. Between trivial objects – linen, bras, globe, wicker basket – and Americana evoked by the American flag or the cowboy hat, it is indeed into our contemporary era that Alex Prager plunges us with “Western Mechanics “.
Title of this photograph, but also of her first exhibition in Seoul, Western Mechanics is his eighth with the Lehmann Maupin gallery. From May 9 to June 22, 2024, she presents a new body of independent works in the trendy Itaewon district: around ten rich and emotionally charged vignettes. From the plain, to the beach, to the street, it takes the visitor into its scenes that we almost think we have lived or dreamed of, on the borders of realism and imagination.
Having grown up on film sets, this former child actress has always been fascinated by the 7th art and the range of talents that make it up. Stylist, director, set designer… by working with them, she managed to embody them all and orchestrate in each of her photographs the impression of a shot from a great Hollywood film. His scenes are rich in symbols, objects and characters… There are eight of them in California, for example! Eight bodies, eight lives, eight destinies which are so many entry points and stories which intertwine to create a narrative force where the artist leaves us free in our interpretation.
If in this exhibition there is no linear common thread, we nevertheless note that the motif of the suspension continually returns. The impression that the film is paused. A woman rushing out of a building, a couple walking with determined steps in the rain, a woman suspended in the air… As the artist explains in an interview with Widewalls, “these intermediate moments in life allow us to to touch our metaphysical existence. No matter how many times you are told that what you see is what you get, there is a whole other world, invisible to the naked eye, that exists parallel to the physical world, and is just as susceptible to change the course of your life. » If society tends to deny the existence of this surreal and magical world, which limits our ability to interact with it, Alex Prager has given himself a mission: to remind people of their true nature by showing them the existence of these two worlds.
Beyond the beauty and cinematographic aspect of her works, it is indeed something deeper that animates Alex Prager’s photographs. Through her productions, she questions the very foundations of contemporary society, leaving spectators in a state of perpetual questioning. Is the suspended woman in Hollywood Day falling or is she sucked into the sky? Her use of archetypes, everyday objects, humor and allegory, allow her to explore dark and complex subjects such as our relationship to time, memory, collective and individual identities and the impact of technology on society. “Western Mechanics”, an expression which while dealing with the subject of the West – what it once was, what it has become today – also underlies the conflict between man and the influence of the latter on our society. What do we think about it in the land of robotics?
Marine Aubenas
Alex Prager : Western Mechanics
May 9 – June 22, 2024
Lehmann Maupin
213 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan District
Seoul, South Korea
https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/exhibitions/alex-prager9
