Amanda Trager

Amanda Trager makes paintings, sculpture, and installations that are fused with prose, visual first-person narratives.  Her works use character development as a way to talk about the world, society, and relationships in the way a novelist or songwriter would, but often with the added element of physical confrontation (and the scale of her work is often confrontational).  The kind of characters that interest her are those involved in some kind of spiritual or emotional quest.  The tone is often tragicomic.  Trager often uses the form and emphatic address of the protest sign in her creations.  This sets up an expectation of a political message, but her pieces are political only obliquely, after being run through the idiosyncratic filter of a particular character’s longing, despair, or confusion.  The texts she uses come from a wide variety of sources:  novels, newspapers, websites, etc., which she then changes or combines in ways that suit her idea for a particular piece.  She also composes her own original “messages.”

Trager has had a recent solo exhibition at Momenta Art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  In 2004 she participated in the Brooklyn Museum’s Open House and created installations at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (NextNext Visual Art program) and at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.  She has also had solo exhibitions at Annika Sundvik Gallery in New York, NY, and at Clifford-Smith Gallery, in Boston, MA.  Her work was also included in recent group exhibitions at White Box Gallery, at E.S. Vandam, and at Feature, all in New York, NY.