Alex Prager

La Petite Mort

entirelyunexpected4700 Grand Avenue Des Moines, Iowa 50312 515.277.4405 www.desmoinesartcenter.org

Journeys into Peripheral Worlds, the 2017 Single Channel video series, features four artists — Ethan Murrow, Michael Najjar, Wangechi Mutu, and Alex Prager — all of whom depict very different kinds of fantastic worlds. Three of the videos feature a protagonist, and the fourth, a group of people, all of whom are journeying through dystopic, uncanny, or futuristic worlds. Although seemingly unfathomable, certain qualities of these worlds directly resonate, for better or worse, with our current reality. The quests embarked upon by these characters remain unresolved – there are no clear conclusions or evidence of salvation. Instead, the open-ended journeys seem to suggest that the future is in our hands to make of it what we will.

Alex Prager’s video works dabble in the peripheral worlds we are perhaps the most familiar with — dreams and the movies. Her cinematic universes focus on intense emotion and epic themes such as obsession, disaster, and mortality. Visually arresting and highly stylized, Prager’s art is influenced by classic cinema, fashion, and artists such as Cindy Sherman and William Eggleston. La Petite Mort, starring French actress Judith Godréche and narrated by Gary Oldman, presents a surreal and suspenseful exploration of love and death, rendered in the warm, bright tones of vintage Technicolor. The phrase “la petite mort” is most widely known as a French description of orgasm, but the term can also refer to an overwhelming sensation, either transcendent or tragic, that can affect ones

reassuring narration — our first clue that this is the artificial environment of the movies. Stirring music and sharp shadows give hints to emotional beats, particularly when the protagonist moves pointedly through an apparently disapproving crowd and then faces off with an individual male character. Are these family, friends, and lovers? Is her collapse a tragedy of their making or an escape from their rules? These questions are all left to the viewer, but Prager’s powerful camerawork allows us to sympathize with the heroine. Close-up shots of actress Judith Godréche’s expressive face combine with shots from her character’s point of view, lets us see this dreamlike world as she does, as well as her place within it. Everything, from the strange expressions on the other actor’s faces, to the soaring musical score, and the mysterious cat and train imagery, seems to exist only in relation to the heroine’s emotional journey. Like many films, particularly of the classic Hollywood era when everything was shot on constructed set, Prager presents a wholly artificial world that nonetheless conveys and elicits genuine feeling. The colors may be too rich, the shadows too dark, and the actress’ hair and makeup too perfect, but it is remarkably easy to be swept up in the melodrama. The closing voiceover closely ties together the concepts of love and death, leaving the viewer to speculate what kind of romantic or familial drama could have led to the main character’s confrontation with the train. Rather than simple explanations, Prager offers both an enigmatic tale to engage with and creates the mysterious universe it plays out in. Like dreams and the best movies, much is left open to interpretation.

LAURA BURKHALTER | CURATOR

1. www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/picture-galleries/2012/april/25/the-little-death-of-alex-prager/

consciousness or make one feel closer to death. Although there is a distinct sense of the protagonist’s sexuality in Prager’s video, evinced by the brief nude shots and dynamic set up between the lead female actress and her male co-stars, the work more strongly ties to the experience of death or near-death its title implies. “La Petite Mort is me exploring one really intense emotion. It’s about the idea of death, or, at least, what it might feel like to die. It describes the moments immediately before and after the event, in a beautiful, kind of surreal way,” states the artist.1 The imagery presented in the film is distinctly dreamlike, and seemingly takes a cue from surrealism and even Freud, as much of its sex and death symbolism appears almost deliberately unsubtle. A black train barrels towards the viewer, its cloud of black smoke exaggerated to fill half the sky. A nimble cat runs across the tracks, with hair a ginger hue similar to our heroine. The main character swims fully clothed through dark water, suggesting both she and viewer are witnessing a dreamscape, particularly when she emerges fully dry and perfectly coiffed. Events unfold with little or no relation to one another, and La Petite Mort contains no dialogue to explain the actions occurring, but nonetheless the viewer is able to construct a vague, enigmatic narrative. Prager suggests her storyline primarily with her expert use of the tools and language of cinema, and most audience’s familiarity with such. As with the work of Cindy Sherman, Prager’s expertise in classic film tropes, particularly in costuming and art design, appear so close to certain films of the 1950s and ‘60s that some viewers may assume they are seeing recreated scenes from existing cinema, which is not the case. La Petite Mort opens with a title sequence, accompanied by Gary Oldman’s soft,

ALL IMAGES Alex Prager (American, born 1979) La Petite Mort, 2012 Film HD shot on a red epic camera, color, sound Running Time: 7 minutes Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

SINGLE-CHANNEL Journeys into Peripheral Worlds

Alex Prager

La Petite Mort

10/19/2017 – 01/07/2018

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PAMELA BASS-BOOKEY AND HARRY BOOKEY GALLERY

Alex Prager Biography

Alex Prager was born in Los Angeles, California in 1979. She lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is in the collections of prestigious museums around the globe, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many other. In 2012, Prager won an Emmy award for her collaboration with the New York Times entitled Touch of Evil. More of her work can be seen at alexprager.com.

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entirelyunexpected

4700 Grand Avenue Des Moines, Iowa 50312

515.277.4405 www.desmoinesartcenter.org