MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047 Alex Da Corte Press Packet Heinrich, Will. “On the Met’s Roof, a Wistful Fantasy We’ve Been Waiting For.” , April 15, 2021. The New York Times Thackara, Tess. “Taking Big Bird to New Heights.” , April, 4, 2021, p. AR13. The New York Times “Goings On About Town.” , May 10, 2021, p. 4. The New Yorker Madsen, Kristian Vistrup. “Eggs in Moonshine.” , no. 218, April 2021, cover, pp. 16–17. Frieze Pogrebin, Robin. “Alex Da Corte Selected to Enliven the Met’s Roof.” , February 12, 2021, p. C3. The New York Times Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview Russeth, Andrew. “In Philadelphia, Alex Da Corte Reinvents an Allan Kaprow Classic.” , March 12, 2020. Surface Kron, Cat. “Marathon Man.” , Winter 2019, pp. 178–81. Cultured Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post Norton, Margot, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte in Conversation with Margot Norton.” , no. 29, October 2018, pp. 94–105. CURA Schwartz, Erin. “In Alex Da Corte’s Spooky New Show, St. Vincent Co-Stars with a One-Eyed Cat.” , February 21, 2018. Garage S. M. “Alex Da Corte Mashes Lush Contemporary Colours with Cryptic Consumerism.” , no. 118, September/ October 2017, pp. 120–23. Frame Fox, Charlie. “Prodigal Son.” , October 22, 2017, pp. 47–48. T: The New York Times Style Magazine Kennedy, Randy. “An Artist’s Eccentricities, Fueled by a Signature Style.” , March 28, 2016, p. C1. The New York Times Smee, Sebastian. “Stuff and Nonsense: Fantastic Universes Unfold in Spellbinding Show at MASS MoCA.” , April 8, 2016, pp. N1, N4. Boston Globe Droitcour, Brian. “Coming Up Roses: Alex Da Corte at MASS MoCA.” , May 5, 2016. Art in America Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76. Modern Painters Ballard, Thea. “Inorganic Matter: Layering Space to Explore Family History.” 27, no. 2, February 2015, pp. 36–38. Modern Painters Droitcour, Brian. “Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson.” 103, no. 2, February 2015, p. 110. Art in America McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art Godfrey, Annie Larmon. “Alex Da Corte.” 53, no. 10, Summer 2015, pp. 343–45. Artforum Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In . Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012. Mother’s Annual 2012 Bollen, Christopher. “Alex Da Corte.” 40, no. 2, April 2010, p. 62. Interview MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047 The other day I saw a giant bird perching on a sliver of crescent moon. It was clutching a comically short ladder, and the whole scene — an installation by the conceptual artist and designer of immersive environments Alex Da Corte — was on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, tucked into a corner of one of New York City’s most spectacular patios. The piece instantly brought me back to my favorite Italo Calvino short story, “The Distance of the Moon,” about the good old days when Earth and its moon were almost close enough to kiss. Rowing out to the point of closest approach, the narrator and his friends would erect a ladder and leap across to the lunar surface, where they frolicked and gathered cheese. For his 2021 Roof Garden Commission, which opens Friday, Da Corte taps into a similar vein of straight-faced irony. The bird in “As Long as the Sun Lasts” — its title is borrowed from another Calvino story — is a full-size, Heinrich, Will. “On the Met’s Roof, a Wistful Fantasy We’ve Been Waiting For.” , April 15, 2021. The New York Times custom-made, blue but otherwise unmistakable Big Bird, the beloved Sesame Street denizen. Gazing wistfully over the oligarch aeries south of Central Park, it looks torn, unsure whether to climb back down to earth or fly away forever. Fabricated from stainless steel and covered with 7,000 hand-placed aluminum feathers, the Bird swings gently from one end of a long pole fixed 20-odd feet off the floor. (Its ladder is definitely too short.) Attached to the pole’s other end are five brightly colored metal discs, a nod to Alexander Calder’s floating mobiles, or at least to their mass-market nursery knockoffs. The installation’s base, three interlocking stainless-steel blocks with rounded corners, like modular plastic, are also painted Calder Red. The Met Roof Commission isn’t easy to pull off. The artist competes not only with the breathtaking vista of Central Park, framed by a forest of Manhattan luxury towers, but also with the aura of the treasure house downstairs. Whatever the artist chooses to mount will promptly be Instagrammed to death in an endless summer bacchanal of selfies. So a winsome surefire crowd-pleaser like this, which turns gentle circles without ever getting anywhere, may simply be Da Corte’s satirical, if not especially biting, response to the assignment: Why try to get somewhere? Why not just give people what they want? But that wouldn’t account for its undercurrent of melancholy, the pathos of an innocent creature in the grips of a big decision. Da Corte has spent his artistic career being other people — dressing up Heinrich, Will. “On the Met’s Roof, a Wistful Fantasy We’ve Been Waiting For.” , April 15, 2021. The New York Times as the rapper Eminem, even adapting Alexander Calder’s signature on this sculpture’s base — and constructing elaborate installations that give you the sense of having wandered into some other world, brightly colored but eerily unrooted. (The museum received informal permission for the project from the Calder Foundation and Sesame Street.) Born in New Jersey, he spent his early childhood in Venezuela, where he watched a Brazilian version of “Sesame Street” called “Vila Sésamo.” That show’s Big Bird equivalent, Garibaldo, is blue. But the characters don’t much resemble each other — if you can overlook their both being anthropomorphic birds — and this Bird’s blue isn’t even the same as Garibaldo’s. What this Bird’s tint really evokes, whether or not you’ve ever seen Garibaldo, is a confused memory, or “jamais vu” — déjà vu’s opposite, the feeling that something familiar is suddenly strange. Jamais vu must have been the artist’s experience of moving to the United States as an 8-year- old. It’s certainly been unremitting for everyone this past year, as ordinary life became suddenly impossible and bizarre new habits — wiping down groceries, wearing a mask, or two — cycled in and out of practice. I suspect that most visitors at the Cantor Roof Garden will be asking themselves whether this is really what the place was like before the pandemic. (The answer is, not exactly: There used to be a roof garden bar.) Heinrich, Will. “On the Met’s Roof, a Wistful Fantasy We’ve Been Waiting For.” , April 15, 2021. The New York Times A blue Big Bird also brings to mind a disturbing scene in the 1985 children’s movie “Follow That Bird,” starring Sesame Street characters and puppets. Having captured, caged, and painted him the color of melancholy, two carnival grifters force Big Bird to perform a song called “I’m So Blue” — and then rake in the cash. As a metaphor for the artist’s relationship to institutions — with Da Corte, for example, as the sunshiny innocent, and the Met as his captor — the reference would be too easy. But as a picture of the childish innocence that we all learn to keep captive and subject to the crass demands of adult life, it’s kind of heartbreaking. Heinrich, Will. “On the Met’s Roof, a Wistful Fantasy We’ve Been Waiting For.” , April 15, 2021. The New York Times Everything about the piece — from the character itself to the graphic shapes and colors of the Calder-like mobile and the preschool play-set base — signifies whimsy. But recognizing whimsy, as a viewer, isn’t the same as feeling whimsical. In fact, it can sometimes feel like the opposite, a regret-saturated reminder that our days of whimsy are behind us. We have bills to pay, products to sell, wars to wage, statements to make, reviews to write. It isn’t our fault we can no longer reach the moon. Our ladders are simply too short. The truth is that “As Long as the Sun Lasts” appealed to me in a visceral way I felt obliged to be suspicious of. Seeing a well-known children’s character in a space still dedicated to old-fashioned ideas of high culture made me feel as if someone was getting away with something. But when the breeze started up and Big Bird began to swing, it was surprisingly thrilling. I wanted a ride, myself. I even reached up to touch Big Bird’s foot. It was a few inches out of reach. Heinrich, Will. “On the Met’s Roof, a Wistful Fantasy We’ve Been Waiting For.” , April 15, 2021. The New York Times MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047 empathy and earnestness, that has been on his mind. When I found Da Corte, 40, in his Philadelphia studio, he was preparing to give PHILADELPHIA — Among Big Bird perhaps the most the characters that the elevated stage of its five- artist Alex Da Corte has decade journey through the transformed himself into American imagination — for his video work and in- stallations are Eminem, Mister Rogers and the Wicked Witch of the West.