Alexi Worth

Alexi Worth

Fellow: Awarded 2009
Field of Study: Fine Arts

Competition: US & Canada

University of Pennsylvania

Alexi Worth is a painter who was born and lives in New York City. He has received awards from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Tiffany Foundation, and is currently represented by the DC Moore gallery on 57th street.

Mr. Worth’s paintings are marked by their “quirky realism and deliberate surfaces,” (Roberta Smith, New York Times), as well as by their combination of formal simplicity and humor. Cartoonlike but puzzling, they often rely on interrupted, cropped or overshadowed views. “We’re blocked from seeing or interpreting at every turn,” wrote one critic, “but the effect is engaging rather than frustrating” (The New Yorker, “Goings On About Town).

In addition to his painting, Alexi Worth teaches at the University of Pennsylvania’s M.F.A. program. He has curated exhibitions in Boston and New York, and written about art for Artforum, The New Yorker, Art in America, T magazine, and other publications. Selections from a decade of his writing are available on his website. 

 Artist’s Statement

Victoria’s Secret did a fashion shoot in my neighborhood recently, complete with artificial snow. A crowd gathered, and a forest of single arms rose up, each holding an iphone or digital camera. Only one person present—the supermodel—was NOT a photographer. Twenty years ago, we thought photography was already ubiquitous. But in fact, we’re living through a new immersion, akin to the first one of the 1850s. For painting, what does this new immersion mean? More reasons for pessimism, of course. More reasons to indulge our favorite fatalist fantasy, that we are living in painting’s dusk, a last twilit hour. What could be more motivating than that? 

 

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