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Alex Prager

Part Two: Run

Palm Beach

Nov 19–Dec 11, 2022

Photograph by Alex Prager

Lehmann Maupin presents Part Two: Run, an exhibition of new photographs, film, and sculptures by Los Angeles-based artist Alex Prager. The multi-part exhibition will culminate in the debut of Prager’s ambitious new film at the gallery’s New York location in January 2023. Directly responding to a period of cultural ambivalences and uncertainties, the exhibition urgently examines the collective will to exist and explores the opportunities for empathy, participation, and action present both within art and everyday life.

Throughout the ten photographic works that comprise Part Two: Run that will be featured in Palm Beach, Prager examines the cultural mythologies and archetypes that shape our shared existence. Fervently cinematic, works such as Claire and Frances, Diner, and The West craft richly developed characters and interrogate genres such as the noir and the Western as they probe contemporary concerns and anxieties. Occupying a tenuous relationship to time and place, the carefully staged figures remain suspended between the past and the present.

Installation view of Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin Palm Beach
Installation Views: 1 of 5
Photograph by Alex Prager

Alex Prager

The West, 2022

Photograph by Alex Prager

Alex Prager

Mary Suspended Between Heaven and Earth, 2022

Photograph by Alex Prager

Alex Prager

Sleep, 2022

Photograph by Alex Prager

Alex Prager

Eclipse, 2021

Installation view of Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin Palm Beach
Installation Views: 1 of 4
Photograph by Alex Prager

Alex Prager

Liberty, 2022

Photograph by Alex Prager

Alex Prager

The General, 2022

Portrait of Alex Prager

Alex Prager (b. 1979, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is an American artist, director and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. Prager is known for her uncanny images and films that blur the line between artifice and reality to explore the human condition. Prager has spent over two decades honing her signature style, which draws on traditional movie making techniques from golden-era period styles (like film noir and Technicolor), classical mythology, and the allegorical works of Dutch Renaissance painters Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brugel. Over time, large-scale productions have become synonymous with her work.

Working simultaneously across film, photography, and sculpture, Prager constructs highly emotional moments that feel like a fabricated memory or dream. Her distinctive use of archetypes, everyday objects, humor, and allegory—along with her signature technicolor facades—allow her to explore dark and complex topics. Existential concerns are central to her practice, including collective and individual identities and the impact of technology on society. Like the psychological works of artists including Alfred Hitchcock, Edward Hopper, Pipilotti Rist, August Sanders, and Bill Viola, Prager’s work invites the viewer to contemplate the human experience by revealing that the extraordinary lurks within the ordinary.

Learn about the artist