Alexi Worth creates artwork ‘inspired’ by dialogues with Trump supporters

DC Moore Gallery presents “Alexi Worth: Changing Table,” an exhibition of new mesh paintings created since August, and partly inspired by Worth’s efforts to conduct civil dialogues with Trump supporters online. The exhibition will run through December 23.

“After many months of efforts to engage in exclusively mild, friendly terms,” Worth writes, “I needed an outlet for suppressed feelings of childish fury, bafflement, and irritable fascination.”

Using a new version of his distinctive spray technique, Worth envisioned lewd and absurd but not wholly improbable scenarios involving Kimberly Guilfoyle, Rush Limbaugh, Paul Manafort, Kanye West, and other political notables.

The show also includes images of babies, which are loosely autobiographical.

Worth explains, “When my aunt first met me, I urine-fountained all over myself. In later years, she liked to mention this mishap, with the implication that it represented some Rosebud-like key to my character.”

Both groups of paintings are executed in a rare photographic technique developed in the nineteenth century by Ernestine Lefevre Tournachon. The “psychophotogram” involves exposing imaginary objects to direct sunlight. The results, with their shallow depth and heightened 3D contours, resemble an elaborated form of freehand line drawing.

Alexi Worth has had solo exhibitions with the Elizabeth Harris, Bill Maynes, and DC Moore galleries, among others. Group exhibitions include Open Windows curated by Carroll Dunham at the Addison Gallery in Andover MA; Private Future curated by Michael Cline at Marc Jancou, NY; and In A Violet Distance curated by David Humphrey at Zurcher Studio, NY.

In addition to his painting, Worth has written about art for The New Yorker, Artforum, T Magazine, Art in America, ARTnews, Slate, and other magazines. He has written catalog texts for artists such as Martha Armstrong, Carroll Dunham, David Humphrey, James Hyde, Susan Jennings, Jasper Johns, Jackie Saccoccio, George Nick, Jim Nutt, and Philip Pearlstein.

Worth has taught at various BFA and MFA programs, including the University of Pennsylvania and the Yale School of Art. Born and raised in New York City, he attended Yale University and Boston University.

The artist lives and works in New York City. DC Moore Gallery is located at 535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011.