EXHIBITION
“ ADD TO CART “
9.28.21
AT THE
HQRN

ART CLUSTER  HAIFA

On October 1924, German film director Fritz Lang went on a journey to the US. Upon his return to Weimar Republic, he published the travel diary "Was ich in Amerika sah" (What I've seen in America). As many visitors to the US at the time, Lang was overwhelmed with feelings of both fascination and repulsion evoked by the introduction with the metropolis of New York. His impressions accumulated into the exemplary film Metropolis(1927).

Out of his socialist perspective, and the identification of the brute exploitation in the hyper capitalistic world, Lang's metropolis is divided into two – upper city and underground city. In the underground city resides the hard working class, and in the upper city lives the elite, having nothing in common with each other except for their false consciousness regarding the actual circumstances of their existence.

The exhibition Add to Cart is Eran Prager's travel journey to America, featuring selected works from his 18 months stay in Los Angles. Thematically, this exhibition presents a similar division to the one shown in Metropolis – in Prager's upper city lives the middle class, who's credit score enables the preservation of their status and the further sinking in the consumerist fantasy of happiness, those who add to their virtual cart their online shopping, and boxes received to them are smiling – as the arrow in the logo is pointed upward, symbolizing the upswing of their life.

In Prager's under city lives those who hold an actual cart – supermarket cart which contains their overall belongings on earth, the ones delivery boxes aren’t smiling to – they are turned downward to serve as shelter from the rain. In turning downwards, the arrow in the logo also turns down, and the smile is replaced by the bleak face of the material circumstances of their life.

The second series exhibited in the show includes three paintings taken as frames from the work of documentarist Frederick Wiseman. Wiseman films are dedicated to the exploration of places and institutions that are somehow outside the  normative order, and the people that were extracted from the American dream. The two scenes of children are taken from the film Public Housing (1997), and the character of Jim, an inmate in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution for the criminally insane, is taken from the 1967's film Titicut Follies.

All portraits in this exhibition presents a synthase between two competing stances throughout the history of art – critical realism from one hand, and expressive painting from the other. This sharp and painful synthase well describes the spectrum of hope and despair present in this emotional experience of "What I've seen in America", 2020 version.

Text: Lina Falah