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
-
Samsung and Sony have unleashed new phone flagships, with Nothing snapping at their heelsDo flagship smartphones still have a place in a world of masterful mid-range devices and a general move towards less screen dependence, rather than more? We explore two new entries into the genre
-
Find bubbly, chewy, perfectly crusted pizza at Cosetta, LA’s new Westside Italian gemLocated in a slightly industrial area by the Santa Monica airport, Cosetta, from pizza maestro Zack Pollack, champions the local Italian dining scene with tradition and innovation
-
Oscar Niemeyer: a guide to the Brazilian modernist, from big hits to lesser-known gemsArchitecture master Oscar Niemeyer defined 20th-century architecture and is synonymous with Brazilian modernism; our ultimate guide explores his work, from lesser-known schemes to his big hits; and we revisit a check-in with the man himself
-
A major Takashi Murakami exhibition sees the world in kaleidoscopic colourThe Cleveland Art Museum presents 'Takashi Murakami 'Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow', exploring outrage and escapist fantasy
-
Ai Weiwei’s new public installation is coming soon to Four Freedoms State Park‘Camouflage’ by Ai Weiwei will launch the inaugural Art X Freedom project in September 2025, a new programme to investigate social justice and freedom
-
Leonard Baby's paintings reflect on his fundamentalist upbringing, a decade after he left the churchThe American artist considers depression and the suppressed queerness of his childhood in a series of intensely personal paintings, on show at Half Gallery, New York
-
Unlike the gloriously grotesque imagery in his films, Yorgos Lanthimos’ photographs are quietly beautifulAn exhibition at Webber Gallery in Los Angeles presents Yorgos Lanthimos’ photography
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella ValleyWill Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
-
Cowboys and Queens: Jane Hilton's celebration of culture on the fringesPhotographer Jane Hilton captures cowboy and drag queen culture for a new exhibition and book
-
New gallery Rajiv Menon Contemporary brings contemporary South Asian and diasporic art to Los Angeles'Exhibitionism', the inaugural showcase at Rajiv Menon Contemporary gallery in Hollywood, examines the boundaries of intimacy
-
Helmut Lang showcases his provocative sculptures in a modernist Los Angeles home‘Helmut Lang: What remains behind’ sees the artist and former fashion designer open a new show of works at MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House
