Integration Space

Integration Space, SPACE art + supply, Los Angeles, CA, 2023

Integration space explores the inward and outward cycles of change. It considers the boundaries of identity and transparency of process, expressed through material traces of practice into form. Alexa layers dance, painting, installation, and video perspectives. She incorporates and repurposes found objects outside their usual limits and asks us to reconsider everyday tools and modes of being. These elements move through phases of construction and deconstruction, until the components begin to blend and the dividing line between body, object, and space blur into a matter of perspective.

Atom Cycle

LA Performance Practice, LAX Festival, Los Angeles, CA, 2021

This installation was based on the seven phases of Alexa’s Keep it Clear oracle deck: Reflection, Alignment, Embodiment, Expression, Evolution, Relation, and Source. The boundaries between inward and outward cycles were blurred as Alexa progressively layered found materials with live drawing to visually connect the body and environment together. As the piece unfolded, the audience was prompted into the space to participate and invited to become part of the integration.

Bowler Hat

LOGE Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 2018

This installation investigated history as an edge between knowing and a recognition of something yet to be discovered. Alexa connected with her grandfather’s story, a Jewish immigrant who fled to the US in 1939 from Nazi Germany, by wearing his bowler hat and visiting locations he lived and traveled. Through research and family narratives, Alexa combined fact, secondhand information and personal memory into a present experience of historical fantasy. Surrendering to a fluid nonlinear state of identity provoked multiple versions of herself to coexist.

The walls of LOGE invited the viewer into the space between the black and white of knowing. The covering stripes are reminiscent of the enclosure of a prison cell. Yet, as if the veins of one’s bloodline in movement, the stripes became a vessel into an almost psychedelic fantasy. Alexa began her exploration with the bowler hat in Berlin and concluded the project in Leipzig where the hat was made. A video installation filmed during her travels also periodically screened. The video investigated questions of identity using the method of Pardes, an approach to understanding Judaism’s religious texts.

Ordinary Affects

Castelli Art Space, Los Angeles, CA, 2018

“Ordinary affect is a surging, a rubbing, a connection of some kind that has an impact.. it gestures not toward the clarity of answers but toward the texture of knowing.” -Kathleen Stewart. The concept of ordinary offers a range of possibilities and restrictions. This piece twisted the ordinary to create space for feeling outside of that range. The art evolved from a stream of consciousness conversation layering performance, installation, and video perspectives. Viewers became part of the process while structures and every day objects were assembled together and deconstructed apart.

Composing Body

Artists Television Access Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2017

This five hour installation with musician Kevin Friedrichsen explored the relationship between body/material and sound/technology. Alexa constructed and deconstructed various lenses to view and be viewed from the gallery window. The process layered dancing, painting, cutting acetate, and rearranging objects into changing environment scenarios. While Kevin composed live modular synth loops which responded to the space and also inspired the shifting environment.

Listening Body

Despina Gallery, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, 2017

This month long residency explored the power of process. Alexa committed to listening to the unfolding of the creative process by responding to to each element as it emerged and led to the next iteration. The work evolved out of several phases: 1) Covered the body in traditional blue dye and learned Brazilian dance ritual. 2) Combined dance and painting onto large canvases and filmed the process. 3) Cut and layered some of the painted canvas onto vinyl panels, and combined them with the body. 4) The performance combined the large canvas with the hanging vinyl, while dance painting within the installation. A video of the creative process screened as well.

Element

IDEO Reimagine Series, San Francisco, CA, 2018

IDEO presented the theme of reimagining - so this piece considered environmental decline, overpopulation, and food issues. The installation invited viewers to experience themselves as a participant and/or witness, incorporating dance, paint, organic materials, and video.

Harvest Moon

Performance with Poolside DJ set, San Francisco, CA, 2018

In response to the theme of process, the piece evolved out of many phases. The installation of dance painting incorporated acetate, which was cut and rearranged throughout the performance. Viewers were also invited to participate and/or witness.

Make Room

Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA, 2016

Invited by the ACC to represent one of the four directions, Alexa painted mixed media murals for the theme South, which pointed to the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. Inspired by the topography, natural materials such as moss and bark were incorporated.

Terrain

Midway Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2016

Alexa has a background in social rebellion through dance where art interrupts the redundancy of public spaces. In the Terrain performance she challenged traditional concepts of what ‘landscape’ is by provoking viewers to consider the terrains we navigate outside of the physical and external. She danced and painted inside a clear box for several hours exploring her internal and external landscapes and the boundaries between them.

Body as Printing Press

Midway Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2016

This performance integrated body and technology into one organic machine, where through dance the body became a live ink press. Alexa uses herself to portray the mechanisms of the press. On one hand the body is already a machine. On the other hand machine is often viewed in juxtaposition to the body. This performance highlights both at once and perhaps dissolves that boundary. Machine as soft and organic and body as precise and predictable.

Mural

Commercial Project, Los Angeles, CA, 2016