Alex Von Bergen: Next Time

In his first museum exhibition, Alex Von Bergen will present new site-specific work in the Great Hall, as well as a survey of nearly ten years of his photographic, sculptural, and video pieces in the Southeast galleries. A recent MFA graduate of the University of Arizona whose "I'll Try Harder Next Time" semi-permanent installation is familiar to MOCA visitors, Von Bergen specializes in subtle alterations to the mundane and commonplace. With a nuanced and dry wit he comments on the absurdities and paradoxes of the current era, illuminating the complexities of the tensions between our real-life selves and our disembodied, online ones. Noticing aspects of the built and represented world that are right in front of all of us but often go unremarked upon, Von Bergen takes the stuff of reality and puts it through finely gradated tweaks and transformations, with a playful conceptualism that makes the viewer see the everyday in new, thought-provoking, and humorous ways.

Images by Maya Heilman-Hall.

Alex Von Bergen Didactics

Listen to Alex Von Bergen's Artist Talk HERE