Alex Prager: Face In The Crowd

This exhibition represents Alex Prager‘s debut solo show in Hong Kong. Pragerpresents five new, large-scale photographs as well as video work, continuing her exploration of the psychological experiences of crowds and the individuals within them.

In her Hong Kong exhibition, Prager further refines her examination of the psychological dynamics of crowds, focusing on feelings of isolation exaggerated by the extreme vantage points employed in these images. By creating contorted points of view, especially in the works where the viewer looks up from below at the subjects in the photographs, Prager captures moments of stillness and isolation impossible to view in reality.

Celebrated for her meticulously constructed, theatrical, and richly cinematic images, Prager is inspired by a wide range of influences, from popular culture, to street photography, to the cinematic history of Hollywood. The artist is also interested in the ways in which audiences perceive and experience the pervasive cultural power of Hollywood films. These references infuse Prager’s works with a narrative quality, leading the viewer to speculate on the “before and after” of the moment and characters depicted in her images.
Prager‘s distinctive style and dialogue with Hollywood found full expression in her Face in the Crowd series. Prager managed large-scale sets, hundreds of extras, and a full production team to create precisely composed images of crowds. These works convey a sense of timelessness, extraordinary idiosyncratic detail, and the sometimes contradictory emotions that immersion in a crowd can produce, such as fear, camaraderie, isolation, claustrophobia, and a feeling of belonging to something larger than one’s self.