UNIVERSAL PICTURES

AMERICAN ARTIST, PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILMMAKER ALEX PRAGER BRINGS HER EXAGGERATED AND INGENIOUS SEDUCTION TO SEOUL’S LOTTE MUSEUM OF ART. SHE TALKS TO STEPHEN SHORT

- ALEX PRAGER

Los Angeles-born and -raised American artist, photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager has much on her mind as she arrives to our late-January meeting at Lehmann Maupin gallery, Cromwell Place, London, on the eve of her latest exhibition opening. She’s hosting a “champagne walkthrough” of the work with a posse of private VIPs in 40 minutes, and must “change my skirt, shirt and pants” before chaperoning them. She joyfully orders a glass of claret to focus mind and eye, while simultaneously assessing another show she’s been prepping; her retrospective called Alex Prager: Big West at the Lotte Museum of Art, in Seoul, South Korea, which is open until early June.

“I’m so excited by the Seoul show,” she says, beaming as though this is the beginning of the world (which in a sense it is, given the last two years of intermittent lockdown and her upcoming inaugural trip to South Korea). “I’m calling it Big West because for me it’s about Americana.” We toast ‘Big West’. “It’s literally big pictures of the West, and movie titles and TV shows. I like to use simple, primary titles in my work, almost like children’s titles. I like them to be easy to understand,” she explains. “It felt fitting for what will also be a very large expanse of my work [more than 100 pieces], and those who are interested in the American myth, which is getting more and more mythical. I think what we need right now is more storytelling.”