Grant Recipients Grants to Artists Performance Art/Theater 1995

Alex Bag

AlexBag
  • 1995 Grants to Artists
  • Performance Art/Theater
  • Video and Performance Artist, Photographer
  • Born New York, NY, 1969
  • Lives in New York, NY

Biography

Alex Bag is an artist working primarily in photography and video. Her videos are characteristically low-tech and deadpan, reformulating pop culture sources to develop satirical commentary on contemporary consumer and media culture. She adopts a series of personae and creates characters that are sometimes reused in subsequent works.

In 2012, the Whitney Museum of American Art commissioned Bag to present an original video installation. Bag has also collaborated with Patterson Beckwith to create Cash from Chaos/Unicorns & Rainbows at Team Gallery (2012). For this installation, Bag and Beckwith used footage from their late night public access television program that aired from 1994 to 1997. In 2011, a solo show of Bag's work opened at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich. In conjunction with this exhibition the first monograph of her work, entitled Alex Bag, was published.

Bag has shown work at venues such as The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, New Museum, Tate Gallery, The Getty Research Institute, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum, Yale University, Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and galleries including 303 Gallery, Artpace, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Deitch Projects, and Metro Pictures.

Bag received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union in New York City in 1991. She has lectured at Yale University, California Institute of the Arts, The Getty Research Institute, Parsons School of Design, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Electronic Arts Intermix.

Black haired woman with red lipstick looking directly at the viewer. She wears a white and black striped bandana on her forehead and her open palm faces the viewer. The word destiny is written in red at the front.
Still from Fancy Pantz, from FCPA-supported Public Access Show, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery.
A man clad in red stands in front of a green background with his mouth open, seemingly screaming. In front of him the word sauna stands in bold green letters.
Still from Fancy Pantz, from FCPA-supported Public Access Show, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery.
Blonde person dressed in a cream suit wearing a heavily maked-up mask. Red tulip flowers sit behind them, on a gray wall.
Still from Fancy Pantz, from FCPA-supported Public Access Show, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery.
A woman with blonde hair and a pink shirt stand near a man holding a cigarette.
Still from The Van, from FCPA-supported Public Access Show, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery.
Man pointing his index fingers to the viewer and looking at a different direction with his body twisted towards the front.
Still from The Van, from FCPA-supported Public Access Show, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery.