Vanessa Prager: Static

Overview

Vanessa Prager's Static includes new paintings that pack a sensory and emotional impact, redefining perception in a high-def world. Her impasto pieces resist the quick take and allow us to discover the hidden treasure of the work itself; in these paintings, more is more. In this time of pandemic, when 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.

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