Bio­gra­phy

Unlike many other female artists of her gene­ra­tion, the Ame­ri­can artist Alexa Meade (b. 1986) has become a suc­cessvir­tually over­night by con­que­ring glo­bal media out­lets with her uni­que approach to pain­ting. Fol­lo­wing the com­ple­tion of her poli­ti­cal sci­ence degree, she chan­ged direc­tions and taught her­self to paint. Having been first inspi­red by the shadows of trees she obser­ved on the grass, she spent months del­ving into a tech­ni­que that­con­ver­sely did not con­vey the selec­ted object as a two-dimensional image on can­vas. Rather the sub­ject is trans­for­med into a repro­duc­tion of its­elf, where the sur­face beco­mes the car­rier of it’s own pain­terly inter­pre­ta­tion, espe­cially when the sub­jects are living or peris­hable items, such as people or fruits. The ephe­me­ral nature of her pain­ting style is evi­dent and what sur­vi­ves of Alexa Meade’s work is the pho­to­graph.
Both the pain­ting and pho­to­gra­phic tech­ni­ques are so tightly coor­di­na­ted that the result is a flat, two dimen­sio­nal space, which achie­ves trompe l’oeil, wher­ein the third dimen­sion is dis­cer­ni­ble only in cer­tain areas, such as near the eyes or hair. Occa­sio­nally, Meade inte­gra­tes her pain­ted models into the three-dimensional space around them, allo­wing them to inter­act wit­hin this self-created world (as seen in “Tran­sit” 2009). The­reby repealing the boun­da­ries bet­ween pain­ting, pho­to­gra­phy, per­for­mance and instal­la­tion. Meade recipro­cateswithin the pre­sent deve­lop­ments in art and tech­no­logy. Ever since the Renais­sance, artists have stri­ved for the lar­gest pos­si­ble illu­sion of spa­tia­liza­tion; Meade hides the natu­ral three-dimensional space, redu­cing the object into it’s own flat per­spec­tive.
Since her glo­bal bre­ak­th­rough in 2010, Alexa Meade has been one of the shoo­ting stars of the Ame­ri­can art scene, with exhi­bi­ti­ons and per­for­man­ces in all inter­na­tio­nal art cities. Her spe­cial tech­ni­que of using acrylic paint to trans­form models and objects into flat, two-dimensional images of them­sel­ves and thus to give a pain­terly inter­pre­ta­tion on their own sur­faces has inspi­red and asto­nis­hed people all over the world. Her uni­que approach has gai­ned her world­wide acclaim with exhi­bi­ti­ons in renow­ned loca­les inclu­ding the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Shi­buya Cros­sing in Tokyo, the Smith­so­nian Natio­nal Por­trait Gal­lery in Washing­ton, D.C., and the United Nati­ons Buil­ding in New York City.
In col­la­bo­ra­tion with actress Sheila Vand, Meade deve­l­o­ped the 2012 series “MILK,” in which milk is the per­man­ently chan­ging car­rier of paint that remo­ves the spa­tial con­text of the model and adopts a new, ever-changing iden­tity with the flow of color. In 2015, she has col­la­bo­ra­ted with space-time rese­ar­chers at the Peri­me­ter Insti­tute for Theo­re­ti­cal Phy­sics, crea­ted illu­si­ons with the world-renowned magi­cian David Blaine, and pain­ted in 2018 on the body of pop super­star Ariana Grande for her ico­nic “God is a Woman” music video, which has over 250 mil­lion views. Alexa’s inspi­ring TED­Glo­bal talk, tit­led “Your Body is my Can­vas“, has been viewed mil­li­ons of times.
Her expe­ri­men­tal short film tit­led Color of Rea­lity, a col­la­bo­ra­tion with dan­cers Lil Buck and Jon Boogz, was lau­ded by CNN Great Big Story; it ear­ned their “Art as Impact Award,” and the film was also inclu­ded in the Natio­nal Civil Rights Museum “Free­dom Awards Cere­mony.” Alexa has been reco­gnized by the Tri­beca Film Fes­ti­val with the “Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion Award” and was invi­ted in 2016 to the White House under Pre­si­dent Barack Obama.  In 2018, Google Arts & Cul­ture selec­ted Alexa, Ely Guerra, and Cris­tina Kahlo for their Faces of Frida cam­paign to cele­brate both Frida Kahlo’s legacy and the women who carry it on today. Show­rooms crea­ted by the artist as “Alexa Meade Museum“ were esta­blis­hed in 2016 on the occa­sion of Art Basel Miami and in 2018 on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. She has also been com­mit­ted to cam­paigns by adi­das, Bayer, BMW, Can­nes Lions, Desi­gual, Mau­rice Lacroix, Mercedes-Benz, Ralph Lau­ren, Sony and the San Fran­cisco Sym­phony Orches­tra.
Alexa’s art can be found in The New York Times, Buz­zFeed, The Wall Street Jour­nal, CNN, Jay-Z’s Life + Times, VICE, Vogue, Refinery29, WIRED, Giz­modo, and thousands more media out­lets around the world. Her art has been upvo­ted all the way to #1 on Reddit.com — the “front page of the internet.”

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