Manifestations is Leah Schrager’s first solo show since embarking on her Reality Instagram Project. Schrager explores the synthesis of digital and classical - traditionalism as rendered through cutting edge tech and contemporary IG culture. This project was instigated In October when Schrager received an offer for one million dollars from a mysterious producer (whom she calls Man Hands) to explore a “female-friendly” aesthetic and expanded art production methods. The story will be shared over the next year on her IG (instagram.com/leahschrager).

Schrager’s artistic practice currently focuses on an examination of the gaze, performance within the context of the internet and social media. She encourages her online viewers to participate, becoming part of the art whether aware or naive to the practice. Her recent show, Female Friendly, the first in her Reality Instagram Project, completely sold out at Scope Art Fair in Miami this December. The piece receiving the most buzz, Face Girl vs. Ass Girl, is comprised of two of the artist’s Instagram posts, with comments blown up to large scale and inkjet printed on vinyl. The piece revealed the artist’s social experiments with her Instagram following. One of the images was posted on what she refers to as her “face page”, featuring her artwork and modeling photos– the other posted on her “ass page” featuring more provocative images. The former has a following of 32K followers, the latter has 2.7M, and the length of commentary displayed on the rolls of vinyl reflects differences in tone and engagement.

Schrager creates paintings, digital art, and online performance. She is the model, photographer, artist, and marketer of her images. Her visual works mix a painterly aesthetic with bodily forms and often draw their material from her online conceptual practice. Her works with @OnaArtist (Instagram 2.7m) and Sarah White (The Naked Therapist) explore themes of sexuality, representation, and distribution. Her practice is situated in a contemporary hotbed of female (in)appropriateness, arousal, celebrity, fandom, and commercialism. Schrager seeks to explore female biography and labor in today’s global society.

Schrager has been compared by journalists to such seminal figures as Diane Fossey, Marina Abramovic, Marcel Duchamp, Laurel Nakadate, and Sigmund Freud. She and/or her work have been profiled in 1000′s of media outlets, including Art Forum, Monopol, The Huffington Post, Vice, Viceland, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CBS News, ABC News, The NY Daily News, and Playboy. She has exhibited at Castor Gallery, Untitled Space, Roman Fine Art, Johannes Vogt Gallery, ArtHelix Gallery, and the Museum of Visual Art in Leipzig.