VANESSA PRAGER – ULTRAVIOLET
2017-05-01Prager’s work has garnered critical acclaim for its rich impasto, which bends and refracts light across deeply layered three-dimensional surfaces, offering the viewer a variation of perspectives. Up close see the varying rhythms and nuances in the artist’s brush strokes and stratified layers of paint. There is a physicality that needs to be explored face to face in a personal way. However, pull back from the work and the light again shifts, revealing a face or a figure slyly staring back at you, as if to say “what took you so long?”
The December 2016 issue of Cultured magazine, said that Prager’s work “both conceals and reflects” and that it “dissects people intensely.” Her paintings were described as “tortured souls rendered with thousands of thick richly colored marks, a nearly 3D, ultra-impasto style that places her in a historical lineage after Frank Auerbach or Willem de Kooning.”
Ultraviolet marks an important evolution for Prager as she turns the brush on herself, revealing who she is, or possibly who she wants to be. Full figures are also beginning to emerge, but overall she moves toward the inclusion of colorful, luscious, painterly abstraction. Another impressive achievement is Prager’s ramping up of her scale: one of the new paintings measures 8 x 12 feet, inviting the viewer to more completely enter her assumed world; they become experiential.
Opposite – Blue Velvet, 2017
Exhibition runs from May 13th through to June 17th, 2017
Richard Heller Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave. #B-5A
Santa Monica
CA 90404
