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. 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. Probing liminal space, Prager’s saturated frames examine the human condition and contemporary experience. Imbued with similar themes, Prager created Western Mechanics in tandem with the production of her first feature film, DreamQuil, which will explore the rise of technology and the decline of natural order. Concurrent to Western Mechanics, Prager’s commissioned installation Play the Wind (2019) is on view nearby on the exterior of Hyundai Card’s Music Library in Seoul. Unveiled in 2020, the installation will remain on view through 2025. Additionally, Prager was recently commissioned by LAX to create a short-form film for the airport’s internal electric train system, which will debut in 2025.
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 Edward Hopper, 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.
Across the exhibition, her photographs combine theatrical composition and cultural archetype to produce emotional narratives that traverse the boundaries of mythology and folklore, history and future. Exploring the threshold between states, Prager’s compositions contemplate themes of transformation and uncertainty, transcending temporal constraint. In this way, the passage of time and the endurance of memory generate a certain tension within and between the works in Western Mechanics. 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. Driven by artistic impulse, these vignettes showcase the malleability of time by collapsing the past and the present, underscoring the non-linear nature of the human experience.
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. These varied degrees of suspension—emotional, psychological, and physical—underscore the sense of unpredictability present across the body of work.
Liminality and historical memory merge in Prager’s titular Western Mechanics (2024). Evoking the traditional genre of history painting, Western Mechanics echoes a tableau vivant, portraying human bodies entangled in a dynamic composition akin to Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818—19) or Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830). In a chaotic yet meticulously organized frame, a mound of intertwined figures—some yelling, some fainting, and two kissing—is set against an Americana-inflected backdrop of horse, mountain, and sky. 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. This kind of staged disorder, at once intense, serene, and optimistic, gestures towards the contradictions inherent in contemporary existence. Echoing Friedrich Nietzshe’s notion “we have art in order to not die of the truth,” as well as history and genre paintings, Prager’s careful composition acts as a symbolic window into our present, alluding to the heightened sense of dysfunction, control, and hope that we encounter in the modern world.
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.