Alex Bag

"Ms. Bag, a combination performance artist, stand-up comedian and character actor, is usually the star and sole on-camera participant in her videos, and she has more than enough charisma to carry a show. Her target is media culture, and very often art world culture, which she skewers with mordant brilliance." —Holland Cotter, New York Times

Kunsthall Stavanger is proud to present a solo exhibition by American artist Alex Bag. Working primarily at the intersection of video and performance, Bag incorporates dry humor, popular culture and the contemporary art scene into video works that are at once wryly funny and sharply critical. This exhibition at Kunsthall Stavanger presents individual video works by Bag, a selection of drawings, and a single immersive installation.

Influenced from an early age by television culture and the associated staging of the self, Bag appropriates common media tropes to ironic affect in her artwork. As a child, Bag was exposed to the sets and other behind-the-scenes elements of TV through her father’s work in advertising, which she later described as "something just as exciting and important as traditional kinds of fine art." Her mother also worked in television as the host of The Carol Corbett Show, a popular children's program. The show was later renamed The Patchwork Family and Bag herself was a guest on the show at the age of four. Although these experiences were subtly influential, The Patchwork Family would later overtly impact her work when she rewatched the episodes while in university.

Similar to Pop Art in its pop culture and mass media references, Bag’s work sets itself apart in its open social and political criticism. With few exceptions, the artist herself stars in her low-tech, simplified videos and is a precursor to the now ubiquitous youtube star. Bag has proven herself to be an impressively versatile actress, adopting a variety of roles and delivering her script with deadpan accuracy. Rather than attempting to present fully believable characters, she presents caricatures and parodies of real situations, calling into question the ways in which we define ourselves in relation to media. Simultaneously humorous and disturbing, her videos and installations have been largely influential to a younger generation of artists.