Alexi Worth

Biography

Alexi was born on May 13, 1964 in New York City to parents Robert and Blaikie Forsyth Worth. His mother worked as a social worker, and his father founded a college textbook publishing company.

Worth attended the Yale School of Art, earning a BA in 1986. After attending Maine's Skowhegan School of Art in 1989, he received his MFA from the School of Fine Art at Boston University in 1993.

In 1997 Worth married architect Erika Belsey, who also attended Yale. They currently live in Brooklyn with their two sons.

Painting

Worth is preoccupied with the tension between painting and photography. From his artist's statement: "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."

His paintings deal with art historical questions about viewpoint and representation. They feature symbolically charged subject matter such as hands, apples, shadows, and cameras. His scenes are frequently blocked by a foregrounded object so that realistically rendered imagery is simplified into abstract, geometric compositions. Roberta Smith of the New York Times describes this effect: "The quirky realism, deliberate surfaces and modulated colors ... indicate an attention to ultra-conscious abstract painting."

His stylized figures have been described as reminiscent of Pixar or claymation. The formal arrangements of body parts often create ambiguous interpersonal relationships between the characters in his paintings.

Recently, he has been painting with acrylic on nylon mesh; the unique surface has an odd depth and mimics the halftone of print media.

Some of his new work deals with the unrest in the Middle East and the globalization of media scrutiny.

Critical reaction

Critics praise Worth's humorous yet philosophically sophisticated paintings.

A reviewer in The New Yorker described his paintings thus: “We’re blocked from seeing or interpreting at every turn, but the effect is engaging rather than frustrating."

Jack Bankowsky of Artforum chose Worth for the "Best of 2011," saying, "His subtle play of shadow and substance, of represented image and abstract invention, makes one's head turn circles around how a given picture was made- and what it means to make one."

In the New York Times, Ken Johnson has said: "Painted with sensuous neatness in a nicely simplifying representational style, Alexi Worth's pictures present curious visual puzzles slyly charged with sexual undercurrents. ... It's hard to think of another painter these days who has such infectious fun with the philosophical analysis of modern painting."

In an otherwise positive review of Worth's solo show "Couples," Roberta Smith noted that some of his paintings were "a little too cutely Disney."

He is consistently praised for his technical ability and "academic finesse."

Teaching

Worth has been a senior critic at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts since 2001. In 2005 he participated in the Elizabeth Murray critics panel at Museum of Modern Art. He taught at Yale College in Spring 1996 and University of New Hampshire from 1993 to 1995.

Writing

Worth does freelance writing for publications including The New Yorker, Artforum, T magazine, Art in America, ARTnews, and Slate.

Recently he has written catalog texts for artists such as Martha Armstrong, Carroll Dunham, David Humphrey, James Hyde, Susan Jennings, Jackie Saccoccio, George Nick, Jim Nutt, and Philip Pearlstein.

Awards and honors

Curating

Selected exhibitions

2013

2012

2011

2010

York, NY

New York, NY 2009

2008

2007

2006

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1997

1996

1995

1991

1990