Name: Alex Klein
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Year of Birth: 1978
Areas of Work: Photography, Video, Writing, Publishing, Curating
Website: http://excursus.icaphila.org/ii/
Alex Klein is an artist, writer, and curator. She recently relocated from Los Angeles to become Program Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Among her projects at ICA she has launched the multifaceted programming initiative Excursus, organized the ICA Salon discussion series, and co-curated the exhibition First Among Equals, which considers the various modes that artists develop to work with their peers and influences.
Klein’s own work addresses issues of historical mediation and the materiality of ideas, primarily in the form of films, videos, and photographs. Her work has been included in exhibitions such as 3,348 Hours of Sunshine, Clifton Benevento (New York), Seven Card Stud, Cherry and Martin (Los Angeles), Person to Person, Las Cienegas Projects (Los Angeles), and American Spirit, Galerie Crone (Berlin). In addition to the space of the gallery, her practice also encompasses talks, curatorial arrangements, critical writing, and publishing projects.
She is a co-founder with designer Mark Owens of the independent publishing imprint and editorial project, Oslo Editions (www.osloeditions.com), which published it’s first volume, CONTRA MUNDUM I – VIII, in 2010. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the journal Dot Dot Dot, Foam Magazine, and most recently the exhibition catalogue How Soon is Now? (Luma, 2012). In 2009 she edited the critical volume on photography Words Without Pictures (LACMA / Aperture, 2010).
Prior to her position at ICA she was a Lecturer in the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California and the Ralph M. Parsons Curatorial Fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She received her MFA from UCLA, Los Angeles, her MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and her BA from Columbia University, New York.
