Not Quite Myself Today
Video Works by Eight Artists
Arizona State University
Art Museum
at the Nelson Fine Arts Center
December 15, 2001 - March 3, 2002
Alex Bag
Alex Bag
Untitled Fall '95, 1995
Video
00:57:00
Courtesy of EAI and American Fine Arts, CO., New York, NY
Alex Bag
Lives and works in New York
Untitled Fall '95
Each fall the experience begins anew - fresh-faced, energetic young students enter art school to escape their parents, who predictably do not understand them or their artistic drive. They arrive with a false sense of freedom, but soon discover that there are even more rules, regulations and requirements on campus. The art student dream of a bohemian lifestyle and limitless studio time is quickly shattered by the brutal reality of critical theory, western civilization, humanities and art history classes.
Alex Bag's Untitled Fall '95 follows one such student's journey through each semester of her college career. The video looks at the head-on crash between the fantasy of artistic identity and expression and the actuality of the institutionalized educational experience. Using direct dialogue with the camera, intermixed with performative vignettes by the artist, Bag airs her personal views and demonstrates the survival skills she used to slog through four grueling years of influential boyfriends, patronizing male teachers, bad student video works, stultifying artist lectures and paralyzingly mundane jobs.
About the Artist
Alex Bag received a BFA from Cooper Union in New York. Her work has been included in the exhibitions: Performing Bodies - Tate Gallery, London, England; All You Need is Love, Laznia (Bathhouse) Centre of Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland; Catlyst Arts, Belfast, Ireland; Elysian Fields, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Herz aus Glas Parking Meters, Cologne, Germany; Making Time, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL; Post-Pop Post-Punk, Museum of Contemporary Art DC, Washington, DC; Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, France; Zaal de Unie, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid, Spain; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand; Le Magasin, Open Project Room, Grenoble, France; Emi Fontana Gallery, Milan, Italy; 303 Gallery, New York, NY; Visioni, Pitti Immagine, Florence, Italy; All of Me, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, CA; I Hate Movies, Andrew Kreps, New York, NY; Feria Internacional de arte contemporaneo: Arco '98, Madrid, Spain; The Video Room Festival, The Video Room, New York, NY; The Fifth International, New York, NY; Harriet Craig, Apex Art, New York, NY; Young and Restless, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; 100 Photographs, American Fine Arts, New York, NY; Up Close and Personal, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Some Kind of Heaven, Kunsthalle Nurenburg and Sadi Coles HQ, London, England; 7e Semaine Internationale de Video (Biennale de L'Image en Mouvement), Saint-Cervats Geneve, Switzerland; Video Divertmento, San Casciano Dei Bagni, Italy; Doug Aitken, Alex Bag, Naotaka Hiro, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Does Television Inform the Way art is Made?, Grazer Kunstversin, Austria; Persona, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL and the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Nirvana: Capitalism and the Consumed Image, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA; How we will behave, Robert Prime Gallery, London, England; Push-Ups, The Factory, Athena Fine Art School, Athens, Greece; Nach Weimer, Landesmuseum, Germany; Smart Show, Stockholm, Sweden; Hero, Common Wealth Gallery, Madison, WI; Koln Art Fair, Galerie Esther Schipper, Koln, Germany; Dirty Pictures, Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, CA; Supastore boutique, Laure Genillard Gallery, London, England; Closing In, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Alex Bag, Alix Pearlstein, Paul McCarthy, Anthenem, Dijon, France; Dan Bernier Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; The Contemporary Center, Honolulu, Hawaii; Images, Saint-Gervais Geneve, Switzerland; Wish You Were Here, De Appel, Amsterdamn; and The 5th New York Film Festival, Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center, New York, NY. She has also presented live performance works at the following: Utopian Art Festival, Hotel 17, New York, NY; Circus of the Stars, Hotel 17, New York, NY; The Alterknit Theatre, The Knitting Factory, New York, NY; and Threadwaxing Space, New York, NY.
John D. Spiak
Curatorial Museum Specialist
Arizona State University Art Museum
For more information contact John Spiak at spiak@asu.edu.
ASU | Herberger College | ASU Art Museum | Internal Resources | Staff Directory
