Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Alexandra Metcalf works in painting and sculpture, reinterpreting the history of
gendered labor through antiquated ornamental traditions. Metcalf considers the way
historic counter-culture movements shape aesthetics, the intense patterns and
coloring of her paintings representing domestic landscapes that are full of anxiety
and populated by hysteric women. Metcalf mythologizes a dramatic descent into
madness through exaggerated, yet self-aware images related to historically
established notions of femininity. One could see this as a satire of literary tropes or
an attempt to paint the heightened levels of dramatic tension characteristic of
operatic storytelling, where most things are to be seen in parenthesis. Her
fascination with craft is coupled with attempts to regender labor intensive mediums
that have been historically seen as masculine, among them stained-glass, bronze
casting and hand-crafted woodwork.
Metcalf’s works have recently been exhibited at 15 Orient Gallery, New York;
Kunsthalle Zürich, Champ Lacombe, Biarritz; Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris; LOMEX, New
York and Ginny on Frederick, London.