Alexis Karl

Alexis Karl is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist living and working in NYC.

Karl studied fine arts and music at Cornell University and The NY Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art. She is currently a professor of olfactory- driven installation and multidisciplinary art at Pratt Institute, and has been a regular lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum, National Arts Club and Morbid Anatomy Museum,(where she was the house perfumer),  on the relevance fragrance, fashion, film and literature on modern and historical artistic culture. In addition, Karl is presently directing and shooting experimental documentary and dance films for the US State Department, and is currently in production on a horror movie in her Brooklyn neighborhood within a self-fabricated forest film set (left). 

Karl’s work often veers into the realm urban folk horror, envisioning a post human world set within her hand-fabricated film sets, which are then revisioned within the walls of galleries as multi-sensorial experiences.

Her filmic work, which began as experimental pieces integrated to her large scale sculptural installations and live performances,  developed into a concentration of experimental, feature, fashion, dance and documentary that now define Karl’s oeuvre.  Her films,  along with her sculptural, aromatic and sonic immersive installations and live, aromatically driven performances with her troupe, LEX and The Cult of Spirits, have won acclaim in festivals and exhibitions around the world, most notably: The Whitney Biennial, The Guggenheim Museum, Stephen Romano Gallery,  The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick, The Morbid Anatomy Museum, Scope Art Fair, Katra Film Festival, Los Angeles Fashion Festival, Bowery Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival.  Presently, Karl’s  films are screening as public art installations on the Manhattan Bridge Light Year Projections and Jay Street DUMBO Glow projections.

Karl’s cinematic and olfactory-multidisciplinary work have been featured in New York Times: Women in The World, NY Post, Elysian Magazine, Gothic Beauty Magazine, Heathen Harvest, Honeysuckle Magazine,  London Financial Times, Atlas Obscura, Bustle Magazine; with TV and Radio spots on Salford City Radio UK, WMBR Bat's In The Belfry Radio Boston,  CNN and The View.

Karl is a Joan Mitchell Foundation and New York Council of The Arts recipient.