Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

On view in ICA Miami’s Atrium Gallery, “Alex Bag: The Van (Redux)*” features a seminal but rarely-seen video, The Van (2001), alongside a newly commissioned video and site-specific installation that brings historic work to the present. This exhibition marks the first major US presentation of a new work by the video and performance artist since her 2009 exhibition at The Whitney Museum.

The Van, originally presented by American Fine Arts in New York at the Armory Show, sees Bag enacting the role of three ambitious young artists producing new work for an unseemly art dealer. At ICA Miami, The Van is presented in the original customized Dodge vehicle where the video was performed and recorded, to be parked in the Atrium Gallery. In a new work, The Van (Redux), the audience is re-acquainted with the art dealer, Leroy Leloup. Nearly two decades later, he has discovered three new young artists, who are played in the video by Bag’s five-year-old son, Augie. The video, shot in Miami in collaboration with Wet Heat Project who were initially commissioned to create a documentary about the artist, continues the artist’s evolving approach to art, fiction and reality.

Since the 1990s, Alex Bag (b. 1969, New York) has been a groundbreaking figure, exploring issues of performance, role-playing, narrative and polyvocality long before the popularization of reality television or social networks. In many of her historic videos works, Bag appears as various characters, offering social critique on such topics as fashion, television, advertising, and the art world. Major recent solo exhibitions have included the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Łaźnia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk, Poland; Zaal de Unie, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; among others. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Centre d’art contemporain Saint-Geneve, Geneva; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York; and Pitti Immagine, Florence, Italy; among many others. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.