B. 1990 (Paris)

Alexa Culioli is Franco-American artist based in Chicago.

A multi-disciplinary artist who manipulates materials such as paper, ink, copper, textiles and wire —materials vulnerable to change over time— invites a reflection on the act of preservation and social value over time.

Best known for her walnut paintings on paper, Culioli’s walnut series draws on an ambiguous interplay of memory and abstraction in studying objects uncoupled from their semiotics, and heavily drawing references from shapes reminiscent of ancient cultures (prehistoric structures, cave paintings) as well as futuristic designs from contemporary designers.

Culioli’s compositions involve decayed objects without obvious use, and social landscapes buried in layers of pigments, echoing the ancient as well as the future, amalgamated into an aesthetic language that utilizes both abstracted subjects and abstract explorations of raw texture and form. 

An interest in presenting her artwork within an architecturally considered context leads Alexa to design exhibitions as a site-specific installation, meant to immerse the viewer into the work. This encounter of the work and the viewer fosters themes of displacement, tabula rasa, and dystopia, which in turn conjure a sense of universal belonging through the imagination of ancestral and the alien.

EXHIBITIONS

2023, Lake Forest Show House (paintings featured in premier Chicagoland interior design showcase), Lake Forest, IL (USA)

2022, Fragments (solo exhibition), Randy Heller Design House, Chicago, IL (USA)

2022, Totems (solo exhibition), Chicago, IL (USA)