When the self-taught, LA-based artist Vanessa Prager began exhibiting her scenic narrative paintings in 2008, they captured an aesthetic that fell somewhere between Mark Ryden’s ethereal dreamscapes and the hard realism of Weimar Berlin’s New Objectivity painting. While they garnered some acclaim for Prager, who is the younger sister of photographer Alex Prager, they weren’t working for her at a core level.
‘I got tired of trying to make everything perfect and the work didn’t leave enough room for the story I wanted to show through,’ says Prager, who was growing frustrated in a romantic relationship a few years ago when she began painting over all of the old works in her downtown studio. ‘There was a sense back then that if the paintings weren’t perfect, they were throwaways, and I didn’t like that. I started I started piling on more and more layers on my paintings and it just felt nice.’
What emerged was a body of heavily-impastoed portraits, whose rivulets of oil teased out new perspectives, entry points, and abstractions into what were previously flat, fairly anodyne images. The decision to go thick has been paying off. In addition to solo shows in San Francisco (at Jenkins Johnson Gallery) and Los Angeles (Richard Heller Gallery), Prager’s thick stylings are now on display at The Hole, in New York, where she just opened her latest solo effort, Voyeur.
‘It’s like when you browse the internet and have all this in-flow of information through Amazon and Google searches or Tinder profiles and you form a whole persona based on tiny bits of information,’ says Prager. ‘I think it’s human nature to have one bit of information and fill in everything you don’t know, just automatically.’
At the Hole, that plays out in a series of portraits — from 8x8-foot diptychs to 8x8-inch boards, which begin as palettes and end up as monstrous characters such as Pablo’s Bones — that offer a window onto the composite catalogue of (real, imagined, and digitized) faces that have come under Prager’s purview over the last year. By abstracting her characters more than she ever has, Prager is stripping away the possibility of lazy voyeuristic reads.
‘When you see these on Instagram, you see the faces clearly, especially the eight-footers, but when you see them in real life, you do not see these faces so the point is that there’s a million little pieces making up the whole,’ she says. ‘It’s not supposed to be super clear, they’re blending into the background but they are the background.’
Think of them as painterly versions of the wallpaper scene in When a Stranger Calls — only far less creepy.
‘I got tired of trying to make everything perfect and the work didn’t leave enough room for the story I wanted to show through,’ says Prager, who was growing frustrated in a romantic relationship a few years ago when she began painting over all of the old works in her downtown studio. Pictured: Faded
What emerged was a body of heavily-impastoed portraits, whose rivulets of oil teased out new perspectives, entry points, and abstractions into what were previously flat, fairly anodyne images. Pictured: Bubblegum
‘It’s like when you browse the internet and have all this in-flow of information through Amazon and Google searches or Tinder profiles and you form a whole persona based on tiny bits of information,’ says Prager. Pictured: Blooming Through The Brush
The series of portraits ranges from 8x8-foot diptychs to 8x8-inch boards that offer a window onto the composite catalogue of (real, imagined, and digitized) faces that have come under Prager’s purview over the last year. Pictured: Glory
By abstracting her characters more than she ever has, Prager is stripping away the possibility of lazy voyeuristic reads. Pictured: Fred
‘When you see these on Instagram, you see the faces clearly, especially the eight-footers, but when you see them in real life, you do not see these faces so the point is that there’s a million little pieces making up the whole,’ she says. ‘It’s not supposed to be super clear, they’re blending into the background but they are the background.’ Pictured: After Midnight
INFORMATION
’Voyeur’ by Vanessa Prager is now on view until 29 Februay. For more details, visit The Hole’s website
Images courtesy of the artist and The Hole
ADDRESS
The Hole
312 Bowery
New York, New York
-
Thirty years after Dog Man Star, Brett Anderson looks back on Suede's album coversBrett Anderson talks cover art, photography and iconic imagery
-
A brutalist garden revived: the case of the Mountbatten House grounds by Studio Knight StokoeTour a brutalist garden redesign by Studio Knight Stokoe at Mountbatten House, a revived classic in Basingstoke, UK
-
Wallpaper* checks in at the refreshed W Hollywood: ‘more polish and less party’The W Hollywood introduces a top-to-bottom reimagining by the Rockwell Group, capturing the genuine warmth and spirit of Southern California
-
Inside the distorted world of artist George RouyFrequently drawing comparisons with Francis Bacon, painter George Rouy is gaining peer points for his use of classic techniques to distort the human form
-
Sunshine noir is given an unsettling spin in new film ‘Skincare’; meet the directorBest known for music videos, director and writer of ‘Skincare’ Austin Peters on how he created the film’s bright, ominous world
-
The seven best Los Angeles museumsExplore LA's world-class museums, set within architectural masterpieces, lush gardens, and breathtaking viewpoints
-
Olafur Eliasson's new light sculptures illuminate Los AngelesOlafur Eliasson's new exhibition, 'Open,' at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, includes 11 new pieces
-
The lesser-known Los Angeles galleries contributing to a vibrant art sceneOutside of LACMA, MOCA and The Broad, these independent LA galleries are major players in the art world
-
Mona Kuhn’s love affair with Rudolph Schindler’s modernist LA home‘The Schindler House: A Love Affair’ features artist Mona Kuhn’s surreal-inspired silver prints evoking an impossible love
-
Crisis point: Josh Kline's world is wiped out by climate changeJosh Kline's dystopian show is currently on at MOCA in Los Angeles
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
