Alex Bag
28 May - 14 Aug 2011
ALEX BAG
28 May – 14 August, 2011
Since the mid 1990s Alex Bag has been one of the most interesting protagonists of video performance, and she is regarded as a vital reference point by an entire generation of younger artists, such as Cory Arcangel or Shana Moulton. She became known for her technically simple video performances, in which she humorously took on and exploited TV culture and its most varied formats, and also the art system and its romantic (artist) conceptions. With convincing precision, Bag cultivated a profound critique of the market system and society, and often appeared herself, as an extraordinarily agile and transformable actor taking on a multitude of roles. In the video that gained her initial recognition, Untitled Fall `95 (1995), she played an art student who, as though in a video diary, depicted her desires and hopes as an artist and in her everyday schooling. In other videos she has frequently investigated the advertising structures in network TV (as in Coven Services, 2004), or the most diverse TV genres and formats (as in Fancy Pantz, 1997 or Gladia Daters, 2005). Elements from advertising film and music videos, documentary and reality TV flow into her artistic work, which persistently generate a major critique of today’s neo-liberal societal structures.
The exhibition is curated by Raphael Gygax, and is the first substantial presentation of works by Alex Bag in Europe. Her works were recently on show at the Whitney Museum, New York (solo exhibition, 2009). In the context of the exhibition, a first-time monograph on Alex Bag’s Œuvre will be published by JRP|Ringier with texts by Raphael Gygax and Bruce Hainley, among others.
Alex Bag (born 1969, lives and works in New York)
28 May – 14 August, 2011
Since the mid 1990s Alex Bag has been one of the most interesting protagonists of video performance, and she is regarded as a vital reference point by an entire generation of younger artists, such as Cory Arcangel or Shana Moulton. She became known for her technically simple video performances, in which she humorously took on and exploited TV culture and its most varied formats, and also the art system and its romantic (artist) conceptions. With convincing precision, Bag cultivated a profound critique of the market system and society, and often appeared herself, as an extraordinarily agile and transformable actor taking on a multitude of roles. In the video that gained her initial recognition, Untitled Fall `95 (1995), she played an art student who, as though in a video diary, depicted her desires and hopes as an artist and in her everyday schooling. In other videos she has frequently investigated the advertising structures in network TV (as in Coven Services, 2004), or the most diverse TV genres and formats (as in Fancy Pantz, 1997 or Gladia Daters, 2005). Elements from advertising film and music videos, documentary and reality TV flow into her artistic work, which persistently generate a major critique of today’s neo-liberal societal structures.
The exhibition is curated by Raphael Gygax, and is the first substantial presentation of works by Alex Bag in Europe. Her works were recently on show at the Whitney Museum, New York (solo exhibition, 2009). In the context of the exhibition, a first-time monograph on Alex Bag’s Œuvre will be published by JRP|Ringier with texts by Raphael Gygax and Bruce Hainley, among others.
Alex Bag (born 1969, lives and works in New York)