ALEX PRAGER: WESTERN MECHANICS
Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present Western Mechanics, Alex Prager’s first exhibition with Lehmann Maupin in Seoul and her 8th solo exhibition with the gallery. Probing liminal space, Prager’s saturated frames examine the human condition and contemporary experience. Imbued with similar themes.
May 9 - June 22, 2024
The exhibition debuts a new body of photographic works that eschew linear narrative and instead focus on the presentation of emotionally charged vignettes. Her photographs, rich in cultural references and historical allegory, offer multiple entry points into evocative and imaginative worlds.
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.
As each composition reflects on the world in its often-dissonant present, Prager keenly identifies moments where our emotional ties to contemporary life are intertwined with the past. For Prager, this method of examining the present through the lens of the past offers a fresh perspective on contemporary discourse—with a hopeful eye towards the future.
Each image in the exhibition conveys this metanarrative, often illustrated through repeated motifs such as a falling woman or a moment frozen in time. In Hollywood (Day) (2024), a woman falls from the sky—a dramatic movement caught in stillness. This specific moment of suspense leaves the composition open to interpretation, reflecting the fragmentary yet enduring nature of memory.
Prager disperses symbolic yet mundane objects throughout the composition, including the American flag, a globe, and women’s undergarments, infusing the dramatic scene within the familiar visual language of everyday life. Western Mechanics captures a tumultuous blend of emotions against an ironic sense of calm, which stems from the composition’s triangular framework. The intertwined figures are positioned in an intentionally geometric structure, evoking a sense of organization within a chaotic frame.
Navigating reality and artifice, Prager’s newest body of work calls into question the very foundation of contemporary society, leaving viewers in a perpetual state of transition. In each photograph, carefully staged compositions become candid reflections of our liminal present—and in turn, they offer endless possibilities for our future.