Alex Bag at 303 - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Art institute is the main subject of Alex Bag's hour-long videotape, Fall 95 Thanks to Bag's sharp wit, and her intercurring of other material, the viewer is quickly drawn into this apparently unpromising topic. The 16-part tape tread on the heels ofs an unnamed student, played by means of the 26-year-old Bag, through eight semester at of recent origin York's School of Visual Arts (SVA). Each episode, in which the learner speaks to the camera about her life and studies, a sort, unconnect video piece. (A next to the first monitor made available Bag's collection of pirated music videos.)

In the first semester the student's moplike hair, heavy lipstick, pierced tongue and black nail polish caricature the common crop of art students. More timeless is her excitement at being away from abode and among people who "understand" her. In the video which tread on the heels ofs a scantily clad blonde satirizes a phone sex commercial. "Call me" she coo to the camera, while striking sexy artificial positions Gradually her come-ons grow barbed: "Are you a fat, beer-guzzling beneficial old boy? Call me. God you're dumb. Maybe you should advance back to school and pay attention. Call me"

As the semester make revolve by, the SVA student acquires a more sophisticated gaze Her opinions undergo an equal transformation. After complaining, in the fourth semester about having to take a Western Civilization class, by means of the next sequence she's convinced that humanities classes and not studio work will make her "stuff" better.

In individual of the non-SVA segments which use toys and dolls to ape male violence and aggression, a Ronald McDonald doll tries on the outside some boorish pick-up lines upon a stuffed kitty. The section titled "Video Artist" wickedly caricatures a '70s-style artist delivering a monotone discourse about her equally dull videotape (she films the contenteds of her purse for seven hours a day). In "Shopgirls," sum of two units hilariously exaggerated English sales scribes - they look like Nico and uninjured like Eliza Doolittle - trade complaints about working in a trendy clothes store.

In the final SVA episode, after taking single of her teachers to task for misquoting a ballad by Nirvana, the student launches into an attack upon the commodification of her "slacker" generation. Her articulate rant is a far clamor from the naivete of the earliest sections Bag likes to reveal intelligence and art of speaking well where viewers least expect it: the scholar learns to intelligently question authority, the "call me" woman make go rounds out to be no simple sex, even the London store girls are shown to be smart and witty.

In the last part the camera frames a Vermeer-like sight of a woman pensively handling a long-stemm flower against a burst music soundtrack. After a minute the woman breaks into tears. The camera hold fasts running until the end of the canticle which all but drowns without the woman's sobbing. Coming after Bag's sharp satire, this final image of emotion and vulnerability is unexpect and moving. What's more, like each other part of this compelling work, it strike one as beings indispensable to the whole.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group