Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce an exhibition of artist Alex Prager’s new body of work, Face in the Crowd, on view at both of the gallery’s New York locations from January 9–February 22, 2014. This two-part exhibition will feature large-scale photographs of elaborately staged crowd scenes at 201 Chrystie Street and an immersive three-channel video installation at 540 West 26th Street. The exhibition is Prager’s debut show with Lehmann Maupin since joining the gallery in September 2013. Concurrently on view through March 9, 2014 is the artist’s largest exhibition in a United States museum at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Shot on a Los Angeles soundstage in early 2013, Face in the Crowd is Prager’s most complex and ambitious work to date. The artist directed hundreds of actors on constructed sets to create portraits of large crowds at airport terminals, lobbies, beaches, movie theaters and other public spaces. For each scene, Prager taps into a shared cultural memory to create images that are familiar yet strange. The characters, clothing, hairstyles and poses are all carefully chosen by the artist to convey a range of time periods from mid-century to present and recall cultural references drawn from street photography and classic Hollywood cinema. The ambiguity of the eras and locations suggest a sense of timelessness while also creating a world that synthesizes fiction and reality. The viewer is removed from the scenes at seemingly impossible vantage points and peer over the crowd of individual characters, each connected by their close proximity, yet simultaneously isolated in their own private worlds. The countless facial expressions are directed toward no person in particular and suggest unshared thoughts and solitary emotions. In an age of increased communication through technology, where in some ways we are more connected than ever, Prager’s scenes of disconnected characters within the crowd remind us of the resulting decline of interpersonal contact in our media saturated society.