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Hammer, Handle, Table, 2024 Mixed media on mesh 24 x 48 inches

Hammer, Handle, Table, 2024
Mixed media on mesh
24 x 48 inches

Reader From Reading, 2024 Mixed media on mesh 24 x 43 inches

Reader From Reading, 2024
Mixed media on mesh
24 x 43 inches

Self Portrait as Steve Scalise, 2024 Mixed media on mesh 30 x 60 inches

Self Portrait as Steve Scalise, 2024
Mixed media on mesh
30 x 60 inches

My Fellow Americans, 2024 Mixed media on mesh 24 x 43 inches

My Fellow Americans, 2024
Mixed media on mesh
24 x 43 inches

Changing Table 3, 2024 Mixed media on mesh 26 x 79 inches

Changing Table 3, 2024
Mixed media on mesh
26 x 79 inches

Dear Reticent, 2024. Mixed media on mesh, 24 x 46 1/4 inches

Dear Reticent, 2024
Mixed media on mesh
24 x 46 1/4 inches

Press Release

For his latest exhibition, Alexi Worth presents a group of three-part paintings, colorful and puzzling ensembles of disparate images. “More like triplets than triptychs,” as Worth describes them, the new works resemble rebuses or comics sequences, bands of adjoining, semi-independent pictures that complicate and complement each other. Each has a different scale, touch, and temperament, a different claim to our attention. Together, they create an associative, subtly enriched kind of pictorial experience.

Several of the trios began as portraits, or reflections on individual personalities, among them poets, artists, and politicians such as Wallace Stevens, Richard Artschwager, George Washington, and Steve Scalise. None are straightforward likenesses. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that old-school, “university president” style portrayal would make sense for a metaphysical poet like Stevens, who appears here as pure shape, a pale portly profile wedged between a geometric storefront and a ragged-edged street puddle––images perhaps of the “ordinariness” that was a leitmotif in Stevens’ poems.

In general, though, Worth avoids explicable connections among the images. What he aims for, Worth says, is “the feeling when a song changes key.” Sometimes the wing images act more like a chorus, supporting the center in a way that suggests traditional European polyptychs. At the same time, Worth’s lean, “shape-and-surface-conscious” compositions leave no doubt that his work descends from artists like Artschwager, no matter how much he might also love the Master of Flemalle.

Since 2010, Worth has been developing his own distinctive formal language, marked by translucent mesh surfaces, frontal lighting, and combinations of brushed and sprayed color. Here all these elements combine with a new iconographic range and humor to create compound images that speak directly to the fractured attentions of 2024.

Alexi Worth has been exhibiting in New York since 2001. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Also known as a critic, Worth has written about a wide range of artists, including El Anatsui, Carroll Dunham, Jasper Johns, and Jackie Saccoccio. The artist lives and works in New York City.

This exhibition is running concurrently with Amy Cutler: Limbo

For press inquiries, please contact Caroline Magavern at cmagavern@dcmooregallery.com

Video

Excerpts from a conversation with Amy Cutler and Alexi Worth. The first half of the conversation is focused on Amy Cutler, and the second half (beginning at 28:00) is focused on Alexi Worth.

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