Tag: Vaness Prager

Richly colored, blossoming pseudo-portraits comprise Vanessa Prager’s solo exhibition titled “Portraits” at Diane Rosenstein Gallery. Each painting depicts a bloom of vibrant flowers sprouting from the necks of the (assumedly) human subjects. Prager’s works are a nod to the classicism and the tradition of still lifes, but are imbued with her own take on the transitory nature of identity and humanity.

Varying in size from the minute to the massive, the works blend the human and the floral in tantalizing reflections on metamorphosis, both literally and figuratively. Each painting brings to mind Karen Barad’s theory of intra-action, which recognizes that “bodies are not objects with inherent boundaries and properties; they are material discursive phenomena.” “Portraits” visualizes this potential for hybridity and interconnectivity as the flowers stretch to the edges of the canvases, teasing the possibility of thriving out and across the gallery, growing into one another and the viewer.

Diane Rosenstein Gallery
831 N. Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
On view through April 1, 2023