Vanessa Prager

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Diane Rosenstein Gallery is pleased to present Static, a solo exhibition of paintings by Vanessa Prager. The recently completed series of oil paintings continues Prager's exploration of sculptural impasto techniques and revisits 19th-century post-Impressionism in the 21st century.

Vanessa Prager’s new paintings pack a sensory and emotional impact, redefining perception in a high-def world. Her impasto compositions resist the quick take and allow us to discover the hidden treasure in the work itself; in these paintings, more is more.

In this time of pandemic, when back-lit digital screens dominate as a means to work, play, connect and exist, Prager is the analog compass directing us back to the tangible. With big, heavy, drippy canvases and what can only be referred to as extreme painting, Prager rejects artificial crispness and reminds us how an abstract work can help us locate feelings so precisely.

The subtle variations in pigment found in Vanessa Prager’s three dimensional works remind us of the muted light of a Georges Seurat tableau—or of Lee Krasner’s bold colors and altered surfaces. Yet, Prager subverts traditional techniques to reimagine familiar subjects—nudes, still lifes, landscapes and portraits—all of which she offers as veiled and distant, palpable and present, and undefined by gender. The faces she paints, and the expressions they portray, subtly reveal an often overlooked, ordinary effect we all quietly share with the world.

Throughout 2020, Prager created in her art what many struggled to find in their daily lives: commonplace moments of warmth, delight, levity and brightness. Her faint outlines of recognizable figures, contrasted with her radiant palette, allude to the often elusive nature of joy, and an optimism for the future. She hopes viewers will experience in these works a warm, enveloping sensation, which may be both felt and understood in the way the paint encases its subjects.

Vanessa Prager (USA, b. 1984) is a self-taught artist, born and raised in Los Angeles. She is known for her elaborate impasto technique that creates layered and sculptural surfaces. Her figurative works engage the oil paint itself as a participant in the image. Prager explores themes of identity, self-reflection, voyeurism and the human condition in the 21st century. Reflecting on a world remotely observed via screens, her three-dimensional work is a direct reaction to that two-dimensional plane.

Prager has received recent solo shows with The Hole, New York; Richard Heller, Los Angeles; and Kristin Hjellegjerde, Berlin and London; and groups shows in Los Angeles with Over The Influence; M+B; and Diane Rosenstein Gallery. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.