Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"Alex Bag as steadily built her oeuvre, a continuous and clear-sighted analysis of culture and its various functions with those who produce it, since the early 1990s. Bag's works articulate a profound sense of unease about our contemporary culture, and her role might be read as that of a femme fatale, a modern Pandora opening her box. Her works always evince humor in its most diverse guises: now as an aberration of taste, now in a form we might describe as hysterical." Raphael Gygax, excerpted from Pandora's Bag--On the Work of Alex Bag in Alex Bag.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Raphael Gygax, Bruce Hainley, Glenn R. Phillips.
Since the mid-1990s, Alex Bag (born 1969) has been among the leading protagonists of video performance, regarded as a vital precursor by a generation of younger artists such as Cory Arcangel or Shana Moulton. Bag became known for her video performances, in which she humorously critiqued TV culture and the clichés of the contemporary art world. An extraordinarily flexible actress, Bag often appeared herself, 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 of network TV (as in “Coven Services,” 2004), or the most diverse TV genres and formats (“Fancy Pantz,” 1997, “Gladia Daters,” 2005). This first Alex Bag monograph includes a complete videography with transcriptions, scripts and stills.
