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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 installations are Eminem, Mister Rogers and the Wicked Witch of the West. In his Technicolor universe, American cultural the roof of the Metropolitan icons share screen time Museum of Art. (While Big with mascots from famous Bird traditionally takes the commercials, and even male pronoun, Da Corte slasher-movie psychopaths prefers not to impose a are lovingly brought to life, gender.) On April 16, Big with hours of prosthetics Bird will ascend to the and tender, surgical-like top of the Met in the form observation. It’s a big-tent of a sculpture. Titled “As worldview that he shares, Long as the Sun Lasts,” Da curiously, with “Sesame Corte’s rooftop commission Street,” in which monsters, takes its name from Italo kids and grouches coexist Calvino’s short story about — and in which he has dis- intergalactic travelers who covered the subject for his search for a planetary home latest artwork. as the Sun is first forming Jim Henson and the in our galaxy. Muppets have been an Da Corte has ap- obsession of Da Corte’s for proached his subject from a long time. During the a similarly existential per- pandemic, though, it is Big spective. On the walls of Bird, an 8-foot-2 model of his studio, a patchwork of

Thackara, Tess. “Taking Big Bird to New Heights.” , April, 4, 2021, p. AR13. The New York Times 3D-modeled studies and pets to its multiracial Big Bird to life for decades, “I think what bile that sways and ro- drawings of Big Bird’s cast, and last year Bid a selfless labor of love — how beautiful. To tates in response to air head show months of Bird and Elmo hosted do that all of your life. It’s difficult to run currents. And Big Bird is deep research into the town halls with CNN to around with these young people and ask not yellow, but blue — a character’s form and es- help American families questions and educate them. That brings reference to the show’s sence: the density and di- talk about racism and me hope. That’s something I want to be a Brazilian version, “Vila rectional flow of its plum- identity. But empathy part of.” Sésamo,” which Da age, melancholy eyes and and the celebration of Da Corte’s Big Bird will be as you know Corte watched in Ven- long, conical beak that difference — and the it, but with a twist. The metal and fiber- ezuela; this Latin Ameri- opens into a goofy pink hard work those val- glass bird will appear perched on a crescent can big bird is blue and smile. “How do you rep- ues demand — have moon, like Donna Summer on the cover of called Garibaldo. (Da licate that softness in a been the show’s mes- her album “Four Seasons of Love” (1976), Corte, born in Camden, material that is not soft?,” sage all along, with Big and suspended on a Calder-inspired mo- N.J., lived in Venezuela Da Corte asked, brush- Bird serving as perhaps until he was 8.) ing a long yellow feather its most openhearted It’s also a homage pinned to the wall. And voice. to “Sesame Street Pres- how do you capture its “When I think of ents: Follow That Bird,” weight, I asked, mean- Carrol Spinney,” Da the 1985 film in which ing Big Bird’s cushiony, Corte said, referring to Big Bird is coerced by pear-shaped mass. “And the actor who brought social workers into leav- the cultural gravity,” the ing Sesame Street to live artist responded. with a suburban family Gravity is an unlikely of Dodo birds in Illinois word in connection to an — “his own kind.” Hav- oversized Muppet, but ing nothing in common in Da Corte’s company with the conventional it’s easy to feel moved Dodos except feathers, by the vision of diversity Big Bird flees back to and community that Big New York, is kidnapped Bird and “Sesame Street” by traveling circus own- represent — especially ers, painted blue, caged now. The show recently and forced to sing a sad added two Black Mup- song for cash.

Thackara, Tess. “Taking Big Bird to New Heights.” , April, 4, 2021, p. AR13. The New York Times “Right now Big Bird is coming corn Tapestries — it evoked Big Bird, across the country in this box, and it’s trapped behind bars in “Follow That killing me because it’s so poetic,” Da Bird.” And toward Paul Klee’s paint- Corte said. His studio worked with a ing “Miraculous Landing,” containing fabricator in California, making micro an ark and a ladder. adjustments to the bird’s form and de- Da Corte said he thought about tail in video calls and through mailed horizon lines in Caspar David Fried- ephemera — feather samples, “troll rich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” blue” color swatches. The sculpture is (around 1818), in which a romantic making the journey to New York from figure gazes out over the sublime; and California in the back of a truck. When Marisol’s “Self-Portrait Looking at the it arrives on the Met rooftop, it will, Last Supper” (1982-84), in which the figuratively speaking, be set free. Da artist placed a sculpture of herself in Corte has placed a ladder in Big Bird’s front of the biblical scene, like she is hands, suggesting the opportunity for “looking at ecstasy,” he said. transcendence or escape. “We wanted In Da Corte’s piece, Big Bird is gaz- Big Bird to have agency,” Da Corte ing out to the skies over Central Park, says. “Will Big Bird stay or go?” its eyes softly, inquisitively meeting a If Da Corte is paying homage to new frontier, whatever it might hold. “Sesame Street,” he’s also views it The work is dedicated to Da Corte’s fa- through a critical lens. The Wicked ther, who came to America from Ven- Witch of the West, for instance, has ezuela as an outsider, an immigrant, a special place in the Sesame Street to find a new home. “There’s some- pantheon: She was excluded from it. thing beautiful about wondering what When the actress Margaret Hamilton Big Bird is looking for,” Da Corte said. appeared in an episode as the witch, “Maybe the sunset.” her character in the “Wizard of Oz,” The various elements of the piece it drew such vitriol from angry par- took shape during the height of the ents, afraid that the show would scare lockdown, and Da Corte’s experience children and promote Wiccan ideas, of that is baked into this project’s that the episode aired just once be- DNA. He sees the work as embodying fore being taken out of circulation. the transitional state that our culture So Da Corte, who reprised his role finds itself in at the tail end of a year- as the witch for this New York Times long global shock wave that promises photo shoot, reimagined her cameo to transform us in ways we can’t yet alongside Oscar the Grouch in his see. “Developing this project through- video “Rubber Pencil Devil,” a series out the pandemic has been so intense, of vignettes and tableaus featured in because you’re thinking of the state of the 2019 Venice Biennale. The witch, the world and how heavy it is,” he said, a queer archetype and protector of “and how do you even exist outside of queer spaces, according to the artist, yourself to look thoughtfully at what’s is also “misunderstood — and she’s got happening in the moment?” something to say,” he added. “I appre- Could Big Bird offer us some de- ciate her.” liverance — some passage to stable Da Corte’s wide embrace of differ- ground? “There’s nothing miracu- ence — and interest in dissonant jux- lous about this and there is no land- tapositions — is matched by his almost ing,” Da Corte said, invoking the title feverish use of art historical references of the Klee painting he was drawn to. and touchstones. As he studied the “It’s just onward. There’s much labor. Met’s catalog in preparation for “As There’s much thought. There’s work to Long as the Sun Lasts,” he gravitated be done as long as the sun lasts.” toward the unicorn trapped by a low fence in the museum’s medieval Uni-

Thackara, Tess. “Taking Big Bird to New Heights.” , April, 4, 2021, p. AR13. The New York Times MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Allusions to Alexander Calder, Big Bird, and lunar landings converge on the roof of the Met, through Oct. 31, in “As Long as the Sun Lasts,” a new sculpture by Alex Da Corte (above, disguised as Jim Henson). An inscription on the base of the piece reads “1969”—but Da Corte made it during the past year. The American artist explains the anachronism in poetic terms: “I wanted to hearken back to the year Jim Henson brought the Muppets to Sesame Street, humans met the moon, and we took steps to a more equitable future.”

“Goings On About Town.” , May 10, 2021, p. 4. The New Yorker MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Madsen, Kristian Vistrup. “Eggs in Moonshine.” , no. 218, April 2021, cover, pp. 16–17. Frieze Madsen, Kristian Vistrup. “Eggs in Moonshine.” , no. 218, April 2021, cover, pp. 16–17. Frieze Madsen, Kristian Vistrup. “Eggs in Moonshine.” , no. 218, April 2021, cover, pp. 16–17. Frieze MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Pogrebin, Robin. “Alex Da Corte Selected to Enliven the Met’s Roof.” , February 12, 2021, p. C3. The New York Times MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Annie Clark, ‘Alex Da Corte’, Interview Magazine, issue 530, March 2020, pp. 174-181

Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview

Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview

Clark, Annie, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte.” , no. 530, March 2020, pp. 174–81. Interview

In 1962, a young Philadelphia arts patron named Joan Kron met with the artist Allan Kaprow and asked him to stage one of his infamous happenings on behalf of the fledgling Arts Council she was helping to run. “I’ll give you Chicken,” she remembers him telling her, and not, “Do you want Chicken?” As Kaprow unspooled what he had in mind, Kron—now 92 and living in New York— `says she realized, “This is going to be trouble.”

Russeth, Andrew. “In Philadelphia, Alex Da Corte Reinvents an Allan Kaprow Classic.” , March 12, 2020. Surface Staged on a November night in the auditorium of the YM/YWHA, Chicken had performers brandishing live chickens, dead chickens (Kaprow slung one around his neck with rope), and quite a few eggs. The artist’s four-page script mentions a “monstrous chicken,” nine feet tall, made of wood, wire mesh, and newspaper, and salespeople, one hawking cooked chicken parts: “Hee y’are! Get ya fresh roasted chicken dinah!” At one point, policemen entered the auditorium and sprayed the giant chicken with fire extinguishers.

“The cleanup was horrible because they were throwing eggs,” Kron recalls. The Y’s board was not pleased, some Arts Council supporters resigned, and a legend was born. “They were doing these radical things because there wasn’t the Institute of Contemporary Art yet,” says curator Sid Sachs, discussing the Arts Council. “These women were involved in the arts in some capacity, and they volunteered, and they just got these shows together.”

The Kaprow blowout marked the end of one such show, the first-ever Pop Art exhibition on the East Coast. It is only one of many remarkable moments surveyed in “Invisible City,” a four-venue exhibition about recent Philadelphia art history running at the University of the Arts there through

Russeth, Andrew. “In Philadelphia, Alex Da Corte Reinvents an Allan Kaprow Classic.” , March 12, 2020. Surface April 4. Organized by Sachs, who runs the school’s galleries, with the art historian Jennie Hirsh, it charts the City of Brotherly Love’s vital art and design scenes in the years between 1956 and 1976, placing luminaries and lesser-known figures side by side, from designer George Nakashima and architect Denise Scott Brown to artist Bill Walton and the Philadelphia Wireman, whose ingenious, compact sculptures was discovered, abandoned, in 1982.

It’s a thrilling exhibition, and last Thursday night, it delivered a reinvention of Chicken by Alex Da Corte, the 39-year-old Philadelphia artist whose videos were a starring attraction at last year’s Venice Biennale. As the temperature dropped, people streamed quickly into the former home of the Y—now Gershman Hall, a four-story neoclassical brick pile owned by the university—to see what he had created.

Yellow signs labeled “CHICKEN” pointed the way to the auditorium. “If you want to see everything, go to the balcony,” an usher advised. “If you want to be in it, go to the ground floor.” Inside, the chairs had been removed from the orchestra level, the room was blanketed in yellow light, and a four-piece band was playing gentle drones. Oddly, there were no chickens in sight.

In one corner, a man in a spherical white outfit (Andrew Smith) stood in a cage, reading a blank newspaper. Scattered around the space were six platforms, on which women in yellow outfits sat, accompanied by signs (“A CLEAN MOON FOR A CHANGE!” “MOON ROCKS!”) and props (lab equipment, stacked egg cartons). They looked like carnival barkers taking meditation breaks. Audience members peered down from the balcony, giving those down below the distinct impression of being gladiators in a Roman coliseum. It felt like all hell is about to break loose.

And there was Kaprow himself! He was instantly recognizable with his fulsome beard and bushy eyebrows, wearing a vest, jeans, and well-worn brown boots. (It was Da Corte, after hours of makeup work.) Suddenly a spotlight was on him, and he had an announcement: “In the words of the great Joe Brainard, I remember Chicken.” And with that, the music turned threatening—sawing strings, as in a slasher film’s soundtrack—and Kaprow was twirling his index fingers in the air, a bit like a superhero villain orchestrating chaos.

The women took turns selling various moon products with high-energy menace. One (Julia Eichten) fired up a vacuum cleaner, shouting as she dusted a huge white bouncy ball. “Don’t you feel shiny?!” she growled. “Don’t you feel light?! Isn’t it good to be white?!”

“You look sad!” another (Jessica Emmanuel) crowed, liquid bubbling in beakers before her. “You look depressed! You look miserable!” It was the moon’s fault, she explained. “If you’re broke: moon! If you’re lonely: moon!”

Russeth, Andrew. “In Philadelphia, Alex Da Corte Reinvents an Allan Kaprow Classic.” , March 12, 2020. Surface A purveyor of moon rocks tossed her products—whole eggs, which splattered all over. “Everybody gets a moon rock today! You get one, and you get one, and you get one!”

The barkers started going at it together, some tossing orbs to the audience. Then a red light hit the stage, and it all was still. A performer glided through the curtains in an angular top and skirt, a wide-brimmed hat, and kitten heels—everything red. It was the dancer Imma, and after slinking down the stairs, they cut through the crowd, scampering to a speedy techno track, pushing over a table stacked with milk crates, unleashing chaos.

Lastly, blue light! The women moved on the man reading the newspaper, pushing his cage to the center. Performers in blue sprayed it with fire extinguishers, the moon man inside shaking slowly. Kaprow was on stage again. “Ladies and gentlepeople, the sky has fallen,” he said, sounding a little forlorn. He suggested that people go home and call their mother, “our lady moonlight, and tell her that you love her. Happy Halloween. And good night.”

The crowd lingered. There had been no chickens, but there had been moments of terrifying salesmanship, dizzying violence, and total pandemonium barely pulled back into order—all very

Russeth, Andrew. “In Philadelphia, Alex Da Corte Reinvents an Allan Kaprow Classic.” , March 12, 2020. Surface American things (at the risk of putting too fine a point on it), assembled over one ingenious, harrowing, entrancing hour.

“I’m still in shock,” Da Corte tells me by phone a few days after the show. “I had never done a live performance before.” Processing it all, he’s been thinking about how “it was a punk show, it was a rave, it was a comedy show, it was so many different things.”

No further performances are planned, even though he worked on it for four years, studying the details of the 1962 original. “The only thing I replaced was instead of a chicken it was this orb, the moon,” he says.

“In my imagination, when we think of an egg, we think of the yellow yolk inside,” Da Corte says, explaining how he came to focus on the moon. “There’s a funny slippage that occurs there, where, in seeing the outside of something you’re also imagining the inside at the same time. I think that’s beautiful.”

The veteran Philly artist Rosalyn Drexler penned the show’s treatment, and choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace marshaled performers and charted possibilities for movement. “It was a deeply collaborative effort with so many people,” Da Corte says. About 20 performers brought it to life. Since then, “we’ve been on this text chain discussing it and saying, Jeez, we see yellow everywhere we go,” he says, “really missing each other in this strange moment we’ve created. I think for me it was singularly quite life changing. I still have no words to describe it. It was just deeply moving for all of us.”

One suspects that Kaprow, who died in 2006 at the age of 78, might have understood what they are going through. He certainly would have admired it. In a 1966 lecture, he said, “A happening is for those who happen in this world, for those who don’t want to stand off and just look.” Later, he put it another way, arguing that “happeners have a plan and go ahead and carry it out. To use an old expression, they don’t merely dig the scene, they make it.”

Russeth, Andrew. “In Philadelphia, Alex Da Corte Reinvents an Allan Kaprow Classic.” , March 12, 2020. Surface Kron, Cat “Marathon Man.” Cultured, Winter 2019, pp. 178–81.

MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Marathon Man Alex Da Corte’s colorful contribution to the Carnegie International requires more than binge-watching. Cat Kron straps herself in for the ARTIST THE IMAGES COURTESY ALL technicolor ride.

178 culturedmag.com culturedmag.com 179

Kron, Cat. “Marathon Man.” , Winter 2019, pp. 178–81. Cultured Kron, Cat “Marathon Man.” Cultured, Winter 2019, pp. 178–81.

Kron, Cat “Marathon Man.” Cultured, Winter 2019, pp. 178–81.

MarathonMarathon Man Man Alex Da CorteAlex Da’s Corte’s colorful contributioncolorful contribution to the Carnegieto the Carnegie InternationalInternational requires requires more than more thanbinge-watching. binge-watching.Cat Kron straps Cat Kron strapsherself in for the ARTIST THE IMAGES COURTESY ALL herself in fortechnicolor the ride. ARTIST THE IMAGES COURTESY ALL technicolor ride.

Alex Da Corte cares, really cares, about television. While the savant Bart Simpson to the petulant, hookah-brandishing caterpillar of artist’s video shorts, recognizable by their Pantone color-blocked sets 1951’s Alice in Wonderland—reminded me of Myles’s winking unorthodoxy and singular attention to sartorial detail, have prompted comparisons to and dissent, evidencing a resistance to the accepted markers of artistic , about television. While the savant Bart Simpson to the petulant, hookah-brandishing caterpillar of Alex Da Corte cares,auteurs really from cares Jean-Luc Godard to Wes Anderson, these works insistently seriousness while remaining utterly sincere in its intent. artist’s video shorts, recognizableburrow into by thetheir less Pantone vaunted, color-blocked existentially humble sets form of1951’s entertainment Alice in Wonderland Memorable—reminded among me the of shortsMyles’s are winking those featuringunorthodoxy the artist dressed and singular attention to sartorialand squat detail, there, have patiently prompted awaiting comparisons your gaze. Da to Corte’sand references dissent, are evidencing as the a live-actionresistance children’s to the accepted television markershost Mister of artisticRogers. In costume, auteurs from Jean-Luc Godardnot tothe Wes highly-produced Anderson, televisionthese works programming insistently of recent seriousness years but rather while remainingDa Corte performsutterly sincere a ritual in familiar its intent. to viewers of PBS’s Mister Rogers’ burrow into the less vaunted,those existentially of the boob humble tube andform Saturday of entertainment morning cartoons—the Memorable sort one amongNeighborhood the shorts—the are taking those offfeaturing of coat the and artist shoes dressed and putting on of and squat there, patiently awaitingimagines your writer, gaze. poet Daand Corte’squeer icon references Eileen Myles are refers toas in theher allusionslive-action children’ssweater and television slippers—but host DaMister Corte Rogers. has recast In costume,his host as a slinking, not the highly-produced televisionto the “teeprogramming vee” of her of childhood. recent years Rubber but Pencil rather Devil (2018),Da Corte the artist’s performs insoucianta ritual familiar vamp. Into character,viewers ofhe PBS’s crosses Mister and Rogers’uncrosses his legs, latest work, is a looping, two-hour-40-minute stream of 57 highly stylized meeting the viewer’s gaze coyly—his deliberate pacing and intent watery those of the boob tube and Saturday morning cartoons—the sort one Neighborhood—the taking off of coat and shoes and putting on of videos nestled gemlike in an immersive, open-plan neon funhouse gaze identical to that of the beloved personality. As in all of the video imagines writer, poet and queer icon Eileen Myles refers to in her allusions sweater and slippers—but Da Corte has recast his host as a slinking, installed at the 57th Carnegie International on view through March 25. segments in this piece, Da Corte has slowed down the video footage to One of 57 scenes from Da Corte’s Rubber Pencil to the “tee vee” of her childhood.These vignettes—populatedRubber Pencil Devil (2018),by performers the artist’s dressed as life-sizeinsouciant versions vamp. Ina snail’scharacter, pace, heevoking crosses the plodding and uncrosses pace of children’s his legs, shows catering Devil (2018). Here the artist is dressed as Mister Rogers, just one of the many television latest work, is a looping, two-hour-40-minuteof characters pulled stream from vintage of 57 popularhighly stylized culture, from meetingthe impish the brat- viewer’sto gazevery youngcoyly—his viewers. deliberate Television, pacing a format and memorablyintent watery described by art characters who make cameos in the piece. videos nestled gemlike in an immersive, open-plan neon funhouse gaze identical to that of the beloved personality. As in all of the video installed at the 57th Carnegie International on view through March 25. segments in this piece, Da Corte has slowed down the video footage to One of 57 scenes from Da Corte’s Rubber Pencil Devil (2018). Here the artist is dressed as These vignettes—populated178 by culturedmag.com performers dressed as life-size versions a snail’s pace, evoking the plodding pace of children’s shows catering culturedmag.com 179 Mister Rogers, just one of the many television of characters pulled from vintage popular culture, from the impish brat- to very young viewers. Television, a format memorably described by art characters who make cameos in the piece.

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Kron, Cat. “Marathon Man.” , Winter 2019, pp. 178–81. Cultured Two stills from Rubber Pencil Devil historian Rosalind Krauss in A Voyage on the North Sea as that medium his program in 1968 with a mandate of respect and gentleness toward greater ethos of inclusiveness. In an email from late 2018 he cited the the singer’s Blue period, ready to “blow this damn candle out/I don’t want which “differs from itself” (given its lack of a single material support), is children, few cultural gatekeepers could get beyond the medium’s schlock host’s foregrounding of respect and empathy for difference. These values, nobody coming over to my table/I got nothing to talk to anybody about.” Yet a fertile subject for Da Corte, whose work has always evidenced a bent associations, and fewer still were convinced by the Presbyterian minister’s now inscribed in Rogers lore—as in the time he sat in a wading pool with when the bottle is finally spent, the light abruptly turns on and Oscar The toward the outré and slippery. mission to make the television set a friend and mentor to his viewers. Da Mister Rogers regular François Clemmons (a black, gay-identifying actor who Grouch turns to the camera from his trashcan in wonderment. Rubber Pencil Devil is dense with queer icons of the past century, from Corte mines this audiovisual repository tenderly, without emphasizing the portrayed Officer Clemmons throughout much of the show’s run) during a Rubber Pencil Devil contains too many cultural references explicit Peter Pan to Dolly Parton—so much that one can become distracted by oversights of its host or the cultural climate in which it was formed. The peak moment of racial tension in this country—are here repurposed as and implied, culled from the annals of 20th-century animation, queer the impulse to catch the references. (I spent considerable time Googling segment What Do You Do With the Mad cites the Mister Rogers’ song “What playful, if sometimes melancholy, meditations on difference. Near the end iconography, and campy Americana, to chart here. But what’s ultimately whether “Live + Let Live,” in which an airbrush gun sprays rainbow bands Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel,” the children’s host’s reflection of Da Corte’s looped video, a slumped player clad from the waist down as underscored is this outmoded vehicle’s capacity to convey compassion over a woman’s white panty-clad bottom, was indeed modeled after Mariah on frustration, which closes with the lyrics “for a girl can someday be a Big Bird, pours a drink into a massive stemmed vessel lit by a lone light rather than merely titillate, and the many ways one can embrace the Carey’s Rainbow tour promo footage, and whether its soundtrack was the woman and a boy can someday be a man.” But despite such sentiments bulb, as Oscar the Grouch looks on impassively from his trashcan. Turned unconventional or out-of-step to express the messy and true aspects of bass line from Parton’s single “9 to 5.”) When Mister Rogers debuted that now register as somewhat dated, Da Corte homes in on Rogers’ away from our gaze, his mien channels a morose, drunk Joni Mitchell of each of our existences.

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Kron, Cat. “Marathon Man.” , Winter 2019, pp. 178–81. Cultured MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

omewhere in one of Alex Da Corte’s studios — near the clothes rack with handmade Popeye, Pink Panther and Bart Simpson costumes — hangs a disco ball covered in dust.

Da Corte’s two vast adjoining studios in North Philadelphia are crammed with brightly colored objects and props for stage sets. One shelf holds a pair of laboriously handcrafted shoes based on those worn by Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” In the middle of the room stands a giant Heinz ketchup

Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post bottle.

The artist and his team of young assistants are deeply absorbed in what they’re doing; the mood is industrious. But once a day, if the sun is shining, the disco ball catches the light. Someone puts on Donna Summer’s 1979 song “Bad Girls” and “between 3 and 4 p.m.,” Da Corte says, “it’s disco hour.”

Da Corte, 38, is from a family of house painters. He was born in Camden, N.J., and raised in Pitts- burgh and Caracas, Venezuela, where his parents are from. Tall, with dark, close-cropped, curly hair and labile good looks, he speaks in a courteous, uninflected baritone. His videos, sculptures and in-

stallations come in deep, bright, saturated colors, often neon. They freely riff on pop culture, including children’s television, reality TV and cartoons. He studied to be an animator and acts in his own videos, wearing costumes made in his studio.

His works are rich in allusions to art and architecture, and concerned above all, he says, with “the idea of pushing beyond an image or breaking through the screen and actually touching the thing on-screen.”

Already the subject of major solo shows in Europe and the United States, Da Corte is putting in a star turn at this year’s Venice Biennale, having been selected to show in the prestigious main exhibition. His work pro- vides a critical take on contemporary realities, yet it’s also exuberant, funny, sweet and absurd. He is trying, at the heart of it, to make sense of America.

Da Corte’s two installations for Venice, which he was trying to finish when I visited recently, will be what he calls “Gesamtkunstwerks”: immersive experiences combining video, sculpture, music and architecture, and teeming with references to Mister Rogers, the music of Prince, the reality show “Big Brother,” Bart Simpson, the avant-garde German artist Martin Kippenberger, Allen Ginsberg and much else be- sides.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post Q: What are you working on?

A: The studio is bubbling. I am currently in the midst of making a large Gesamtkunstwerk, made of many moving threads — video, kinetic sculpture, textile, furniture, neon and sound. At the moment, though, I am boiling shampoo for a painting.

Q: Boiling shampoo?

A: I’ve been thinking about what bad behavior is. You know, we think of soda as well-behaved as long as it’s inside this thin container separating it from the outside. But as soon as you release it, it’s different. So I have been spilling liquids like soda, Vaseline and shampoo onto the studio floor, as a way to keep behaving badly. When I come back to these spills in the morning, they’re different, which I like. Paintings that move in the night keep me on my toes.

Q: You’re making this big, multidimensional work for the Venice Biennale. How did it affect you being invited to participate in such a prestigious show?

A: It scrambled my brain, and for a while I couldn’t dedicate time to it. I was intimidated by it. My thinking tends to be linear. I have to finish what I’m working on before I can move on to the next project.

Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post Q: Where do your ideas come from?

A: They can start out so flat-footed! I think beginning with your own backyard seems to be where the best ideas reside. There is magic buried in the obvious and banal.

Q: You have a team of assistants. That must involve a lot of delegating.

A: That’s so much of it. The work is totally handmade and so going away is difficult, which is why I’m almost never not in my studio. Problem-solving arises as you make. So it’s hard to say, “Do X, I’ll see you later.” Making the work is a conversation the whole way through. It’s like making a quilt. There’s conversation and jokes around a table, family-style.

Q: You have so many ideas. Is it sometimes difficult for everyone to keep up?

A: They’re like, “Oh, my gosh, you change your mind seven times a day!” But it’s not because I’m in- decisive. It’s the same as if you’re making a big painting. You have to keep stepping back to see how it’s looking. Keep problem-solving. Keep asking questions.

Q: Where does your interest in postmodernism come from?

Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post A: An awareness that I’m not the first, that the medium is the message, and that there is something valuable to be discovered in everything. I respect history and what’s come before me. I want to let the forms of the past wash over me.

Q: I know you can’t give too much away, but can you talk about the thoughts and feelings that are feeding into your work for Venice?

A: I have been reading Cookie Mueller’s “Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black .” Also, Florine Stettheimer’s “Crystal Flowers” and her thoughts on butter, Joe Brainard’s memories in “I Remember,” and the lyric “the former is red, white, and blue, the ladder is purple, come on and climb” from Prince’s “Around the World in a Day” album.

I have been thinking about the hope and empathy in the work of Mister Rogers and the beloved Philadelphian architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, who built walls of flowers. I have been thinking about my family in Caracas, the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew, reshaping ideas about kings and princesses, and King Princess. I have been watching steam heat from my window while listening to Alan Vega’s “Kid Congo” and the Sneaker Pimps’ “Bloodsport.” I am currently climbing the purple ladders in my mind.

Q: Wow. I love it. How would you describe the work, and what you’re trying to do with it?

A: I think the work is like a large sandwich of experience and thoughts, layered and stacked and stitched together. If my recent travels have taught me anything, it is that we are very small in this great big world. My hope is that the Gesamtkunstwerk oscillates between a portrait of the macro and the micro and bridges a gap between the two.

Q: You riff on so many things, but especially on TV, including reality TV. Is there a political side to all this?

Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post A: There’s comedy in my critique. I suppose I think that if we can have cartoon characters in power making the rules, why not look more closely at the rules in cartoons?

Q: What feels tricky or risky about being in the middle of creating new work?

A: I find that it’s tricky and risky leaving the house every day, but I do it.

Q: What has surprised you in the doing?

A: I think I could push the funk more. Be braver. Prince taught me that.

Smee, Sebastian, and Alex Da Corte. “Making Magic.” , May 1, 2019. The Washington Post MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

MARGOT NORTON When I was in your studio the other day, I was struck by a table-top of assembled props for your new work Rubber Pencil Devil (2018)—a bottle of Heinz ketchup; a pair of ruby red slippers; a cheerleader’s glittery baton; a McDonald’s Happy Meal container; a replica of the model trolley from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Perhaps it was because these objects were given presentational parity atop the table, of similar size, and isolated from their original contexts, but something about their arrangement struck me as a distillation or deconstruction of your practice—as if they were all the ingredients placed in neat little bowls before the chef tosses them into the blender on the cooking show. I thought that we could start with Rubber Pencil Devil since it seems to be a bit of a Gesamtkunstwerk if you will, incorporating many of the subjects (icons and symbols of American culture) that have haunted your practice from the beginning. The main subject of this new piece is Mister Rogers, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on what it is about him and his children’s television series that inspired you for this work? Norton, Margot, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte in Conversation with Margot Norton.” , no. 29, October 2018,CURA pp. 94–105. ALEX DA CORTE I like that you compared the table to a cooking show. It has become a bit of a habit for me to arrange objects on makeshift table-tops perched on saw horses. It is the way that I understand the objects, look at them in a void, isolate them and imagine how they may become different or surreal. I borrow this idea from one of my favorite works by Venezuelan artist Marisol, titled Dinner Date (1963). In this work, two carved wooden block self portraits sit at a table side by side, enjoying one another’s company, about to eat some carrots and peas and do the things one might do on a dinner date. The work always struck me because if you isolate the wooden blocks as individual components, you are left with three pedestals—the two figures and the table, with some objects on top of the lower, table-like pedestal. Similar to a cooking show, the objects that you mentioned seeing in my studio are just pieces of a meal, happy and alone, unbothered to commune, yet in their communion they become something different—a pie, a second course, even hors d’oeuvres. Maybe Mister Rogers is the unbothered ingredient in his home: quiet, contemplative, happy. Perhaps the dessert is in the land of make-believe, and through that trolley tunnel you find something new and remixed—a stage that allows for a different way of thinking…

MN I thought it was so interesting when you said the other day that while Mister Rogers is the voice of most of the puppet characters in the “Land of Make-Believe,” he never appears in these segments. In the show, the distinction is always clear between the “real world” and the “Land of Make-Believe” via the sequence with the model electric trolley that enters and exits the Land through a tunnel. In one of the videos for Rubber Pencil Devil, you have Rogers appearing together with all of the Make-Believe characters singing Edelweiss from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (1959)—a song that Captain von Trapp sings with his family toward the end of the musical as a statement of Austrian patriotism despite the Nazi annexation of their homeland. Something that I find so compelling about this moment in the work, and with your work in general, is the way you combine disparate references, which are oftentimes incongruous (a character, a song, a logo), and remix and subtly manipulate them in a way that seems effortless, yet somehow unearths the eerie and absurd qualities that underlie the seemingly familiar. What does it mean for you to be bringing these disparate worlds together that might otherwise be odd or even taboo to juxtapose, such as the “real world” and the “Land of Make-Believe?”

Norton, Margot, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte in Conversation with Margot Norton.” , no. 29, October 2018,CURA pp. 94–105. ADC Again I think of food, specifically sandwiches. Wikipedia says a sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese, or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein two or more pieces of bread serve as a container or wrapper for another food type. This leads me to BurgerTime—a game I played a lot as a kid on ColecoVision. The goal of the game is to stack layers of a sandwich by running across them to make them fall on top of each other; to make disparate worlds collide. I studied animation in the mid-’90s and discovered 19th-century English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. I liked that animators Lotte Reiniger, Frank Mouris, and Muybridge used multiplicity in their work, squashing many elements together or stretching them apart. They got the most out of a piece of paper or plastic, wanting to create more than just a flat image—the illusion of depth, of “life.” It was probably around 1996 when I was thinking of this, concurrent with the release of the movie Multiplicity starring Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell. I think my work does that—it goes in and out, squashes and stretches, replicates “life.” Bringing Mister Rogers into the “Land of Make-Believe” is taboo. It is something that cannot be. He voices the characters and operates the puppets. He cannot be seen singing with them... or can he? Maybe he can if this is Multiplicity 2... Maybe seeing this Dale Cooper version of Mister Rogers on the other side of the mirror is what we need right now…

MN Yes! It reminds me of the “man behind the curtain” from the The Wizard of Oz—the self- proclaimed “great and powerful” ruler of the Land of Oz who turned out to be an ordinary conman. Speaking of Oz, the character of the Wicked Witch of the West has figured into your work several times: in Rubber Pencil Devil, as well as in the wall-work Haymaker (2017); as a miniature-version in your 2016 exhibition A Man Full of Trouble at Maccarone gallery; as a large hat in A Season in He’ll at Art + Practice Foundation (2016); in your and Jayson Musson’s Easternsports (2014); and your 2015 exhibition at Luxembourg & Dayan was titled Die Hexe (“The Witch” in German). What does this image of the archetypal witch in all her green glory (perhaps perpetuated by Margaret Hamilton’s iconic portrayal in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) mean to you?

ADC Throughout history, the witch has been the outlier, a foreigner in a new land, an immigrant, a loner, and a queer. By those descriptions, this makes me a witch. I think the witch has to reimagine normative systems of power. This is a healthy place to be. It makes for new ideas and new beginnings.

Norton, Margot, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte in Conversation with Margot Norton.” , no. 29, October 2018,CURA pp. 94–105. Norton, Margot, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte in Conversation with Margot Norton.” , no. 29, October 2018,CURA pp. 94–105. I recently recreated a banned scene from episode 0847 of Sesame Street (February 8, 1976). In this episode, Margaret Hamilton appeared as the Wicked Witch of the West in search of her lost broom. There was an overwhelming response from parents that the episode scared children and even promoted Wiccanism. I think it is wild that this episode is still banned from television. I wanted to free this episode from this kind of limbo prison. There will always be room for resistance as long as there is this kind of othering and my witch costume will always be hanging in my studio ready for a new day.

MN This idea of “reimagining normative systems of power” that you described is something that could be said for many of the symbols in your work, going back to early on in your career. I think of an early work of yours—Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (2010), which I believe was the first video you made. This work is set to Leonard Cohen’s eponymous song, recorded in 1974, in which he remembers a love affair. There is a great stanza in which Cohen describes his lover (said to be Janis Joplin) reimagining these normative systems: “Clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty / You fixed yourself, you said, ‘Well, never mind… we are ugly but we have the music.’” In your video, you tenderly handle everyday objects and perform rituals with them that go beyond their traditional uses, perhaps giving them new life—slices of bread are stacked one on top of the other (à la BurgerTime), drops of food coloring swirl into a just-popped-open bottle of soda, wet strawberries are carefully placed onto dirty fingertips… Do you think of these items in Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (and beyond) as liberated in some way, reimagining traditional ideas of beauty or seduction?

ADC I have been thinking a lot about liberation. Freedom fries. Does Freedom fry? Does it ring? It is relative, I guess, but not everyone expects their Fries and Rings to deliver the way the people in charge say they do. I got all of those materials for Chelsea Hotel No. 2 at Fine Fare Supermarket on Girard Avenue in Philadelphia in the summer of 2010, when I was extremely depressed and hot and ultimately hopeful things would change for the better. Christian Holstad urged me to make a video for a project Lorca Cohen was organizing around her father Leonard Cohen’s album New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). I like skin. All kinds. I like both of the versions of Skins but the Brits do it better. Can something have a new skin? Leonard says it could. Lettuce be done with old ceremonies. I don’t want to colonize the jar of strawberries I bought from Fine Fare. I want to get to know them—each and every blobby strawberry, one by one. I want to touch them and I want you to feel them too. You say that the strawberries will get all over the floor and your clothes and our hands and there is that rat that has been eating all of my work in the studio. It is hot and you are sweaty and we have listened to this song so many times that we cannot hear the words or care to care about Leonard or Janis or anyone. Are these syrupy strawberries edible? I am hungry. Well what next? There are strawberries on our fingers and coffee on our arms and tin foil and tape in our pockets. What next?

ALEX DA CORTE is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. His work has recently been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Vienna Secession (2017), the Kölnischer Kunstverein (2018) and 57th edition of the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. MARGOT NORTON is Curator at the New Museum, New York, where she has curated exhibitions with artists Judith Bernstein, Pia Camil, Roberto Cuoghi, Ragnar Kjartansson, Chris Ofili, Goshka Macuga, Laure Prouvost, Pipilotti Rist,Anri Sala, among others. Norton was also curator of the 8th edition of the Sequences Art Festival in Reykjavík, Iceland.

CREDITS Portrait by Constance Mensh All images Courtesy: the artist

Norton, Margot, and Alex Da Corte. “Alex Da Corte in Conversation with Margot Norton.” , no. 29, October 2018,CURA pp. 94–105. MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Annie Clark in The Open Window. Image courtesy of the artist and Karma, New York

Like Marty, the basketball-playing protagonist of the R.L. Stine book that inspired his new show, Alex Da Corte is allergic to cats. In Stine’s novel Cat, the animal mauls and kills Marty’s friends; the Philadelphia-based artist fared better, with one allergy attack while on set with Annie Clark (also known as St. Vincent). Felines are a fitting mascot forC-A-T Spells Murder, currently on view at Karma, New York, which thematizes fear and dread; the rot lurking behind a peaceful suburban facade; and the suspenseful, tipping feeling before a domesticated animal turns feral and bites.

Schwartz, Erin. “In Alex Da Corte’s Spooky New Show, St. Vincent Co-Stars with a One-Eyed Cat.” , February 21, Garage2018. Outside the gallery, all-seeing neon eyeglasses hang like an optometrist’s sign (similar to his recent window installation at the New Museum), and inside, Da Corte has carpeted the gallery with orange plush, painted the walls pink, and installed fluorescent pink lights.The result is an off-kilter, oppressive lushness, like a Creamsicle miasma, as self-contained and claustrophobic as a fun house. On the walls are neat squares of vinyl siding, as if cut and transplanted from a suburban cul-de-sac, with neon windows that broadcast symbols of safety and danger: a steaming pie and a candle; dangling orange spiderwebs and a pair of watching, narrowed eyes. Playing in the back room is The Open Window, an 11-minute video starring Clark and a one-eyed cat named Dylan.

A giant cat made of foam and tangerine velvet with a wide, cartoonish, sharp-toothed grimace, almost fifteen feet high, is flipped on its back at the center of the gallery. It’s vulnerable—it looks like it’s yowling—and its shadow is a cut-out wraith of blue carpet. Da Corte told GARAGE that it’s a scale facsimile of an inflatable lawn decoration, on sale at Walmart, that he first saw near his sister’s house. “Someone put an arched-back, scared cat in the front of their home, essentially saying that the house is afraid to go anywhere. That the people inside the house are afraid of the world. That’s wild. That’s something I can relate to.”

For Da Corte, horror has long been a useful tool for understanding the world around him. “When I was growing up, I watched a lot of horror movies: Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, John Carpenter. And my family tells ghost stories and tall tales, they love to run their mouths and talk about scary, spooky stuff. It’s in my nature to think about the macabre as a way of understanding the world.”

Schwartz, Erin. “In Alex Da Corte’s Spooky New Show, St. Vincent Co-Stars with a One-Eyed Cat.” , February 21, Garage2018. When Da Corte was young, he wanted to become a Disney cartoonist, painting glass cels in an Anaheim workshop. He still considers himself an animator, but of “cartoons in the physical realm, not just behind plastic.” And there is something macabre in the exaggerated liveliness and slapstick violence of animation, the dread of death in the way rubbery limbs spring back after being slammed into the ground and flattened under anvils. Da Corte also sees parallels between cartoons and the eerie calm of the suburbs: “There’s this really crisp line, of Snow White’s hand and an apple, but the back is a big mess. Any kind of reverse glass painting is that way, it’s muddled on the back side. I think that’s a really beautiful metaphor for understanding the suburbs… the front lawn being clean and the inside of the house being not clean.”

In The Open Window, Clark, wearing a brunette wig and turtleneck to recreate the cover of R.L. Stein’s Cat, cradles a one-eyed cat and stares into the camera, growing visibly uneasy while crickets saw in the background. On the image’s surface, billiard balls decorated with spiderwebs, flowers, smiley faces, are racked and broken; when Clark begins to scream, soundlessly, one sphere rolls, slowly, to cover her mouth. While the video was filmed, Da Corte directed Clark by riffing an improvised horror story: “It was something like, ‘You’re in the house, you’re waiting for your sister to come home, there may be chains, there’s chains, chain noises. Upstairs, I hear a creaking, is it the wind?’” He described it as “a strange poem.” Schwartz, Erin. “In Alex Da Corte’s Spooky New Show, St. Vincent Co-Stars with a One-Eyed Cat.” , February 21, Garage2018. In the tense, warm room, there’s danger in reading the signs wrong: the window with its friendly, steaming pie could be a trap, and the inflatable cat, supine, might spring to life.The works traffic in banality, creating a sense of menace that never erupts into the real threat, the fear of death made more ghastly—and pervasive—through its sublimation, the way it trickles down into the tropes of mass-market horror. “It’s very apt right now. The power of fear, and of politicking in a certain way where fear is used as a tactic, is real,” said Da Corte. “And it yields real results, because we know fear eats the soul.”

Schwartz, Erin. “In Alex Da Corte’s Spooky New Show, St. Vincent Co-Stars with a One-Eyed Cat.” , February 21, Garage2018. MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

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SHOW ALEX DA CORTE mashes lush contemporary colours with cryptic consumerism metaphors

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S. M. “Alex Da Corte Mashes Lush Contemporary Colours with Cryptic Consumerism.” , no. 118, September/October 2017,Frame pp. 120–23. 122

122 VIENNA – Slow Graffiti is populated with a visitors are also unmistakably indoors

122 rooster, a single galosh, one generic metal beneath a broad factory-paned skylight. The folding chair,VIENNA an – upturnedSlow Graffiti umbrella,is populated awith table a visitorsscenographic are also unmistakably quality indoors of the space is rein- 122 fan, pinkrooster, Styrofoam a single packinggalosh, one peanuts generic metal spilling beneathforced a broad by factory-panedan area with skylight. cinema-like The seating, from theirVIENNAfolding bag, chair, –a Slowlarge an Graffitiupturned lemonis populatedumbrella, and a stuffed a with table a visitorsscenographicwhere are also an quality unmistakablyoriginal of the spaceshort indoors is filmrein - – a shot-for-shot fan, pink Styrofoam packing peanuts spilling forced by an area with cinema-like seating, dog, amongrooster, other a single eminently galosh, one ordinary generic metal objects. beneath remake a broad of factory-paned Jørgen Leth’s skylight. The The Perfect Human foldingfromVIENNA their chair, – bag, Slow an a Graffitiupturnedlarge lemonis populatedumbrella, and a stuffed a with table a scenographicvisitorswhere an are original also quality unmistakably short of thefilm space – indoorsa shot-for-shot is rein - Items arefan,dog,rooster, set pink among at a Styrofoamsinglelonely other galosh, eminentlydistances packing one genericordinarypeanuts from metal spilling objects. one beneathforcedremake(1967), by of a anbroadJørgen areastarring factory-paned withLeth’s cinema-like theThe Perfectartist skylight. seating, Humanmasked The as Boris another fromItemsfoldingin a their high-ceilinged,are chair, set bag, atan alonely upturnedlarge distanceslemon 604-m umbrella, and from a2 stuffed rooma onetable thatscenographicwhere(1967), Karloff’s starringan original quality the Frankensteinshort artist of thefilm masked space – a shot-for-shotas is Boris reinmonster- – loops every anotherfan, pink in Styrofoam a high-ceilinged, packing 604-m peanuts2 room spilling that Karloff’sforced by anFrankenstein area with cinema-likemonster – loopsseating, every bristles withdog, among slender other columns eminently whoseordinary smoothobjects. remake20 ofminutes. Jørgen Leth’s The Perfect Human Itemsfrombristles their are with set bag, slenderat alonely large columns distanceslemon and whose from a stuffed smooth one (1967),20where minutes. starringan original the short artist film masked – a shot-for-shotas Boris surfacesanotherdog,surfaces complement among incomplement a otherhigh-ceilinged, wallseminently walls carpeted carpeted604-m ordinary2 room in inobjects. that Karloff’s remake Prefacing of FrankensteinJørgenPrefacing theLeth’s press Themonster therelease Perfect press– loopsfor Human Slow release every for Slow lavenderItemsbristleslavender velvet, are with velvet, setgiving slenderat lonelygiving an columns distancesanimpression impression whose from smooth of oneof lush lush 20Graffiti(1967), minutes.Graffiti starring are lyrics are the (‘Let artistlyrics me masked interpret (‘Let asme historyBoris interpret history anotherflawlessness. in a high-ceilinged, Floor areas are 604-m a jigsaw2 room puzzle that inKarloff’s every line Frankenstein and scar’) frommonster the 1998– loops Belle every & flawlessness.surfaces Floor complement areas wallsare acarpeted jigsaw in puzzle in Prefacingevery line the andpress scar’)release fromfor Slow the 1998 Belle & lavenderofbristles shallow with velvet, shag slender givingcarpet columns anin fieldsimpression whose of pastels smoothof lush that GraffitiSebastian20 minutes. are song lyrics by (‘Let the mesame interpret name, as history well as a of shallowflawlessness.bordersurfaces shag deep, complement carpet rustyFloor hues:inareas walls fields powder-blueare carpeted a jigsawof pastels inpuzzle beside that in1963 everySebastian quotePrefacing line attributed and scar’)thesong press to from byKarloff: release the 1998 ‘Thesame for Belle Slowmonster name, & as well as a border deep,ofburgundy,lavender shallow rusty velvet, lemon-yellowshag hues: givingcarpet powder-blue anin and fieldsimpression violet, of pastels diluted of beside lush that SebastianturnedGraffiti1963 outare song quotetolyrics be by the(‘Let theattributed best mesame friendinterpret name, I to ever as history Karloff: well had. as a ‘The monster borderbrick-redflawlessness. deep, and rustyFloor an umbrous hues:areas powder-blueare orange. a jigsaw puzzle beside 1963Hein every changed quote line attributed theand whole scar’) to coursefrom Karloff: the of 1998 my‘The life.’ Belle monster But & burgundy, of shallowlemon-yellowThe shag oxidized carpet candy and in fields landviolet, of is pastelson diluted show that at thereSebastianturned is no song sense out by of theto a monstersamebe the name, inbest this as wellfriendroom, as a I ever had. brick-redburgundy, and an lemon-yellow umbrous orange. and violet, diluted turnedHe out changed to be the thebest wholefriend I evercourse had. of my life.’ But brick-redSecessionborder deep, and in Vienna,rusty an umbrous hues: which powder-blue orange. presents contem beside- Heno1963 wrinkleschanged quote attributed theand whole little history.to course Karloff: Theof my‘The connec life.’ monster But- Theporaryburgundy, oxidized art lemon-yellowforms candyin solo andandland themedviolet, is on diluted exhibi show- attionturned thereto outthe Vienna tois be no the Secessionsense best friend of – a an Imonster ever important had. in this room, The oxidized candy land is on show at there is no senseth of a monster in this room, SecessionSecessionbrick-redtions. in SlowVienna, and in Graffiti Vienna, an whichumbrous is whichthe visionpresents orange. presents of 37-year-old contemcontem- - noturn-of-the-19He wrinkleschangedno wrinkles theand-century whole little and history. course movement little Theof myhistory. connec that life.’ But- The connec- AmericanThe artist oxidized Alex candyDa Corte, land who is on lives show and at soughtthere is tono produce sense of art a monster and design in this eschewing room, porary artporary forms art forms in solo in solo and and themed themed exhibiexhibi- - tion tionto the to Vienna the ViennaSecession Secession– an important – an important Secessiontions.works Slow in Philadelphia, in Graffiti Vienna, is whichthe where vision presents he of paints 37-year-old contem and - contemporaryturn-of-the-19no wrinkles and thconservatism-century little history. movement and The historicism connec that - tions. Slowporaryconstructs Graffiti art formsvideos, is inthe sculptures solo vision and themed and of sceno37-year-old exhibi- - –tion is turn-of-the-19unclear.to the Vienna But perhaps Secessionth-century that – connection an important movement that American artist Alex Da Corte, who lives and sought to produceth art and design eschewing Americanworksgraphictions. artist Slow in installations Philadelphia, Alex Graffiti Da is thattheCorte, where visionare moody hewho of paints 37-year-old withlives and and contemporaryliesturn-of-the-19 preciselysought into conservatism-century the produce installation’s movement andart historicismfertileand that design air eschewing textureAmerican and artist colour Alex and Da freighted Corte, who with lives the and ofsought disconnection. to produce What art and remains design is eschewing form and works inconstructs Philadelphia, videos, sculptureswhere he and paints sceno- and – is contemporaryunclear. But perhaps conservatism that connection and historicism graphicculturalworks in installationsand Philadelphia, psychological that where are associations moodyhe paints with andof liesfeeling,contemporary precisely and a intension conservatism the installation’s drawn andtaut historicismfertilebetween air constructstextureconsumerconstructs videos, and objects, videos, colour sculptures whichsculpturesand freighted he andmanipulates and with sceno the- and- ofduplicity– isdisconnection. –unclear. is andunclear. But daydream. perhaps What But remains – that perhapsSM connection is form that and connection graphic culturaldecontextualizes.graphicinstallations installationsand psychological that that are are associationsmoody moody withwith of feeling,lies preciselylies and precisely a intension the installation’s drawnin the taut installation’s fertilebetween air fertile air texture Tubeand colour lighting and ranged freighted vertically with thealong ofSlow disconnection. Graffiti is on show What at Secession remains is form and consumer objects, which he manipulates and duplicityin Vienna until and 3 Septemberdaydream. 2017 – SM texture andthecultural columns colour and psychologicalcalls and forth freighted a vague associations image with of theof a feeling,of disconnection.and a tension drawn What taut between remains is form and cultural decontextualizes.and psychological associations of alexdacorte.comfeeling, and a tension drawn taut between metropolitanconsumerTube objects, lighting skyline which ranged– Da he Corte manipulates vertically means along to and duplicitySlow Graffiti and is on daydream. show at Secession – SM in Vienna until 3 September 2017 consumerthearchitectdecontextualizes. objects, columns the ‘skeletoncalls which forth ofhe a avague manipulatesneon image city’ – of but a and duplicity and daydream. – SM Tube lighting ranged vertically along alexdacorte.comSlow Graffiti is on show at Secession decontextualizes.metropolitan skyline – Da Corte means to in Vienna until 3 September 2017 the columns calls forth a vague image of a architect the ‘skeleton of a neon city’ – but alexdacorte.comSlow Graffiti is on show at Secession Tubemetropolitan lighting skyline ranged – Da verticallyCorte means along to in Vienna until 3 September 2017 the columnsarchitect calls the forth‘skeleton a vagueof a neon image city’ – ofbut a alexdacorte.com Da Cortemetropolitan means skylineto architect – Da Corte the means ‘skeleton to of a neon city’ architect the ‘skeleton of a neon city’ – but Da Corte means to architect the ‘skeleton of a neon city’ Da Corte means to architect the ‘skeleton of a neon city’

Da Corte means to architect the ‘skeleton of a neon city’

S. M. “Alex Da Corte Mashes Lush Contemporary Colours with Cryptic Consumerism.” , no. 118, September/October 2017,Frame pp. 120–23. SPACES 123

S. M. “Alex Da Corte Mashes Lush Contemporary Colours with Cryptic Consumerism.” , no. 118, September/October 2017,Frame pp. 120–23. Arts and Letters Prodigal Son From ‘Rocky Horror’ to Alex Da Corte, why

Frankenstein’s Monster continues to haunt queer art.Arts and Letters

BY CHARLIE FOX Prodigal Son FromArts and ‘Rocky Letters Horror’ to Alex Da Corte, why MATTHEW MARKS GALLERYFrankenstein’s Monster continues to haunt queer art. 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047 Prodigal SonBY CHARLIE FOX From ‘Rocky Horror’ to Alex Da Corte, why Frankenstein’s Monster continues to haunt queer art.

BY CHARLIE FOX

Arts and Letters Prodigal Son From ‘Rocky Horror’ to Alex Da Corte, why Frankenstein’s Monster continues to haunt queer art.

BY CHARLIE FOX

‘‘I HAVE FOUND IT!’’ Mary Shelley remembered thinking when she makes it darkly resonant for queer artists beyond any other group. awoke from a fateful nightmare in the summer of 1816 with a thun- When you’re gay and grow up feeling like a hideous misfit, fully derclap of inspiration. ‘‘What terrified me will terrify others.’’ These conscious that some believe your desires to be wicked and want to terrors provided the raw material for ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ which she kill you for them, identifying with the Monster is hardly a stretch: A composed at 19 and published anonymously in London two years misunderstood beast finds solace in the solitude of the woods, but later, unleashing one of the great ogres of the imagination‘‘I HAVE intoFOUND the IT!’’ seems Mary Shelleyto endlessly remembered face the thinking wrath ofwhen the shetorch-bearing, makes it darkly small-minded resonant for queer artists beyond any other group. world. ‘‘I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretchedawoke fromout,’’‘‘I HAVE ashe FOUNDfateful IT!’’inhabitants Marynightmare Shelley remembered in in the thinking the summer whenworld she makes ofbeyond. 1816 it darkly with resonant There a forthun- queer have artists beyond beenWhen any otherexplicitly you’re group. gay queer and grow up feeling like a hideous misfit, fully ‘‘I HAVE FOUNDderclap IT!’’ Mary ofawoke Shelleyinspiration. from a fatefulremembered nightmare ‘‘What in the thinkingterrified summer of 1816when me with willashe thun- terrifymakesWhen you’reothers.’’ it darkly gay and growThese resonant up feeling likeconsciousfor a hideousqueer misfit, artists that fully beyondsome believe any other your group. desires to be wicked and want to wrote, ‘‘and then, on the working of someawoke powerfulfrom a fateful engine, nightmarederclap show of in inspiration. the summerrepresentations ‘‘What terrified of me1816 will terrifywith others.’’ ofa thun- Frankenstein’s These consciousWhen that someyou’re creature believe gay your anddesires at grow toleast be wicked up since feelingand want ‘‘The to like a Rocky hideous misfit, fully terrors providedterrors provided the the raw raw material material for ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ for ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ which she kill you for them, whichidentifying with she the Monsterkill is youhardly afor stretch: them, A identifying with the Monster is hardly a stretch: A signs of life.’’ To quote the mad doctor responsiblederclap of inspiration. for him ‘‘Whatin thecomposed terrified 1931 at 19 and me Horrorpublished will terrifyanonymously Picture others.’’ in London Show,’’ These two years the misunderstoodconscious camp beastclassic that finds some solace that inbelieve the has solitude yourbeen of the desireswoods, screened but to be wickedmore and want to composedlater, at unleashing 19 and one publishedof the great ogres ofanonymously the imagination into the inseems London to endlessly two face the years wrath of the torch-bearing,misunderstood small-minded beast finds solace in the solitude of the woods, but Universal Pictures film: ‘‘It’s alive!’’ Now,terrors as providedthe 200th the birthday raw world. material ‘‘I sawof the for hideous or ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ less phantasm continuously of a man stretched which out,’’ shesince she inhabitantskill its you release in for the them,world in beyond. 1975,identifying There in have which been with explicitly the the Monsterqueer titular is mon- hardly a stretch: A composed at 19 later,and published unleashingwrote, ‘‘andanonymously then, one on theof workingthe in great ofLondon some powerfulogres two engine, yearsof the show imaginationrepresentationsmisunderstood of Frankenstein’s into beast the creature finds seems at leastsolace since to ‘‘Thein endlessly theRocky solitude face of thethe wrathwoods, ofbut the torch-bearing, small-minded Shelley’s Monster — or, really, her monstrous allegory — fastsigns of ap-life.’’ To quotester the mad (created doctor responsible by for himtransvestite in the 1931 Horror Picture Frank-N-Furter) Show,’’ the camp classic that hasis beena lithe screened blond more male in later, unleashingworld. one of ‘‘Ithe Universalsaw great thePictures ogres hideous film: of ‘‘It’s the alive!’’ imaginationphantasm Now, as the 200th ofinto birthday a theman of orseemsstretched less continuously to endlessly out,’’since its release she face in 1975,theinhabitants in wrath which the of titular the mon- intorch-bearing, the world small-mindedbeyond. There have been explicitly queer proaches, he remains at large. Shelley’s Monster —skimpy or, really, her monstrousgold lamé.allegory — (Thefast ap- sterX-rated (created by transvestite“Andy Frank-N-Furter) Warhol’s is a litheFlesh blond male for in Franken- world. ‘‘I saw thewrote, hideous ‘‘and proaches,phantasm then, he remains onof ata the large. man working stretched of out,’’ some she powerful skimpyinhabitants gold engine, lamé. (Thein theX-rated show world “Andy Warhol’s beyond.representations Flesh forThere Franken- have of beenFrankenstein’s explicitly queer creature at least since ‘‘The Rocky wrote, ‘‘and then, on the working But a monstrous of some allegorystein,’’ powerfulfor what, a exactly?retelling engine, Like all great of show myths,Shelley stein,’’representations athat retelling gleefully of Shelley of that Frankenstein’s gleefully chronicles chronicles the creature doctor’s the at-doctor’s at least since at- ‘‘The Rocky But a monstrous allegory for what, exactly? Like signsall great of life.’’ Shelley’smyths, To tale quote shape-shifts the to suitmad any numberdoctor of freaky responsible interpreta- tempt for to createhim a ‘‘perfect’’in the man, 1931 predates Horror‘‘Rocky Horror’’ Picture by about Show,’’ the camp classic that has been screened more Shelley’s tale shape-shifts to suit any numbersigns of life.’’ of Tofreaky quoteUniversal theinterpreta- madtions Pictures without doctor sacrificing responsiblefilm:tempt the original’s‘‘It’s to forhellacious alive!’’create him powers. in Now, athe It‘‘perfect’’ could 1931 as be a theaHorror year.) 200th man, More Picture recently, birthday predates on Show,’’ television, of ‘‘Rockythe ‘‘Penny orcamp Dreadful’’less classicHorror’’ continuously (2014) andthat byhas aboutbeen since screened its release more in 1975, in which the titular mon- Universal Pictures film: ‘‘It’s19th-century alive!’’ premonition Now, aboutas the the dangers200th of birthdaybiotechnology, ofor a ‘‘Theor less Cleveland continuously Show’’ (2011) have since starred its gay release versions of Franken-in 1975, in which the titular mon- tions without sacrificing the original’s hellacious powers.Shelley’s It could fableMonster aboutbe a the possibilities—a or,year.) really, of male birthMore her and all monstrousrecently, the horror such onsteinallegory ortelevision, his Monster. — fast ‘‘Penny ap- ster Dreadful’’ (created by(2014) transvestite and Frank-N-Furter) is a lithe blond male in Shelley’s Monster — or, really,transgressions her monstrous of the so-called natural allegory invoke. Though— fast ‘‘Franken- ap- sterIf vampires (created occupy aby magical transvestite role in the erotic Frank-N-Furter) life of adolescents as is a lithe blond male in proaches,stein’’ he alsoremains remains one atof the large. most savage tales about father-son dys- cultivated loners (consider Robert Pattinsonskimpy in the ‘‘Twilight’’ gold saga, lamé. (The X-rated “Andy Warhol’s Flesh for Franken- 19th-century premonition about the dangersproaches, of he biotechnology, remains at large.function, or the a Monster ‘‘The is a daddy, Cleveland too, responsible in someShow’’ ways for (2011)2008-12,skimpy or have everybody gold lamé.starred in ‘‘Only (The Lovers gay LeftX-rated Alive,’’ versions 2013),“Andy Franken- Warhol’sof Franken- Flesh for Franken- But a monstrous Butallegory a monstrousfantastic for what,creations exactly?including allegory Marilyn Like for Manson allwhat,; great‘‘The Rise exactly? myths, of the Plan- Likestein’sstein,’’ Monster all a greatretelling is their nightmarishmyths, of Shelley queer stein,’’counterpart. that gleefully aHe’s retelling a misfit chronicles of Shelley the doctor’s that gleefully at- chronicles the doctor’s at- fable about the possibilities of male birth and all the horroret of the such Apes’’ (2011),stein which turns, or like his Shelley’s Monster. tale, on the educa- child spurned by his father who grows up to be a sensitive oddity, too Shelley’s tale shape-shiftsShelley’s tiontotale ofsuit an shape-shifts ‘‘uncivilized’’ any number beast; and toof Rei suitfreaky Kawakubo’s any interpreta- ‘‘bump’’ number oftempt freakystrange to create tointerpreta- be accepted a ‘‘perfect’’ by society ortempt reproduceman, predatesto naturally create and ‘‘Rocky a ‘‘perfect’’ Horror’’ man, by about predates ‘‘Rocky Horror’’ by about transgressions of the so-called natural invoke. Though ‘‘Franken-dresses (1997) , recently onIf view vampires at the Met, which occupy distort The a artist magical Alex forced role to seek inrefuge the in seclusion. erotic The artistlife Richard of adolescents Haw- as tions without sacrificingtions without the original’s sacrificing hellacious the original’spowers. It could hellacious beDa a Corte powers.ina his year.) More It could recently, be a ona television, year.) More ‘‘Penny recently, Dreadful’’ on television,(2014) and ‘‘Penny Dreadful’’ (2014) and the bodies of their wearers to throw monstrous shadows. Yet 2017 work kins, whose oeuvre could be understood as a complex wres-

stein’’ also remains one of the most savage tales aboutALEX DA CORTE, ‘‘SLOW GRAFFITI,’’ (STILL), 2017. VIDEO:father-son 12'33 dys- cultivated loners (consider Robert Pattinson in the ‘‘Twilight’’ saga, 19th-century premonition19th-century aboutthere’s somethingpremonition the dangers about this story ofabout biotechnology,of unhallowed the artsdangers that or‘‘Slow a of Graffiti.’’ ‘‘Thebiotechnology, tlingCleveland match with theShow’’ ormeanings a (2011) of ‘‘Thethe Monster, have Cleveland and starred who has gay Show’’ versions (2011) of Franken- have starred gay versions of Franken- function, the Monster is a daddy, too, responsiblefable about the in possibilitiessome ways of malefor birth2008-12, and all or the everybody horror such instein ‘‘Only or his Lovers Monster. Left Alive,’’ 2013), Franken- fable about the possibilities of male birth and all the horror such steinOctober 22,or 2017 his Monster.47 fantastic creations including Marilyn Mansontransgressions; ‘‘The Rise oftransgressions the of so-called the Plan- natural of thestein’s invoke. so-called Monster Though natural ‘‘Franken- is invoke.their nightmarish ThoughIf vampires ‘‘Franken- occupyqueer a counterpart. magicalIf vampires role in theHe’s eroticoccupy a misfitlife a of magical adolescents role as in the erotic life of adolescents as stein’’ also remains one of the most savage tales about father-son dys- cultivated loners (consider Robert Pattinson in the ‘‘Twilight’’ saga, et of the Apes’’ (2011), which turns, like Shelley’s tale,stein’’ on the also educa- remains onechild of the spurned most savage by his tales father about who father-son grows updys- to becultivated a sensitive loners oddity, (consider too Robert Pattinson in the ‘‘Twilight’’ saga, function, the Monster2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd is a daddy, 47 too, responsible in some ways for 2008-12, or everybody in ‘‘Only Lovers Left Alive,’’9/23/17 3:02 AM 2013), Franken- tion of an ‘‘uncivilized’’ beast; and Rei Kawakubo’sfantastic creations ‘‘bump’’function, including the Marilyn Monster Manson is a; ‘‘Thedaddy,strange Rise too, of theresponsible to Plan- be acceptedstein’s in some Monster by societyways is their for or nightmarish reproduce2008-12, orqueer naturally everybody counterpart. and in ‘‘OnlyHe’s a misfit Lovers Left Alive,’’ 2013), Franken- dresses (1997) , recently on view at theet Met, of the which Apes’’ (2011),fantasticdistort which creations turns,The artist like including Shelley’s Alex Marilyn tale,forced on the Manson to educa- seek; ‘‘Therefugechild Rise spurned in of seclusion. the by Plan-his father Thestein’s who artist grows Monster Richard up to isbe theira Haw-sensitive nightmarish oddity, too queer counterpart. He’s a misfit tion of an ‘‘uncivilized’’et of the beast; Apes’’ andDa Corte(2011), Rei Kawakubo’s in whichhis turns, ‘‘bump’’ like Shelley’s tale, onstrange the educa- to be acceptedchild byspurned society byor reproduce his father naturally who grows and up to be a sensitive oddity, too the bodies of their wearers to throw monstrous shadows. Yet 2017 work kins, whose oeuvre could be understood as a complex wres- dresses (1997) , recentlytion of an on ‘‘uncivilized’’ view at the Met, beast; which and distort Rei Kawakubo’sThe artist Alex ‘‘bump’’ forced to seek refuge in seclusion.strange The to beartist accepted Richard by Haw- society or reproduce naturally and ALEX DA CORTE, ‘‘SLOW GRAFFITI,’’ (STILL), 2017. VIDEO: 12'33 there’s something about this story of unhallowed arts that ‘‘Slow Graffiti.’’ tling matchDa withCorte in the his meanings of the Monster, and who has the bodies of theirdresses wearers (1997) to throw , recently monstrous on shadows. view at Yet the Met,2017 which work distortkins, whoseThe oeuvreartist Alex could beforced understood to seek as arefuge complex in wres- seclusion. The artist Richard Haw-

ALEX DA CORTE, ‘‘SLOW GRAFFITI,’’ (STILL), 2017. VIDEO: 12'33 there’s something about this story of unhallowed arts that ‘‘Slow Graffiti.’’ tling matchDa Cortewith thein his meanings of the Monster, and who has the bodies of their wearers to throw monstrous shadows. Yet 2017 work kins, whose oeuvre could be understood as a complex wres-

ALEX DA CORTE, ‘‘SLOW GRAFFITI,’’ (STILL), 2017. VIDEO: 12'33 there’s something about this story of unhallowed arts that ‘‘Slow Graffiti.’’October 22,tling 2017 match with the meanings47 of the Monster, and who has October 22, 2017 47 Fox, Charlie. “Prodigal Son.” , October 22, 2017, pp. 47–48. T: The New York Times Style Magazine October 22, 2017 47

2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd 47 2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd 47 9/23/17 3:029/23/17 AM 3:02 AM

2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd 47 9/23/17 3:02 AM Lookout Arts and Letters

painted stitched- together creatures alongside lusty Boris Karloff in 1931. He called young men, wisely pinpointed the reasons for this the figure he Lookout Arts and Lettersqueer sympathy as well as whatever divides the zom- became famous for playing ‘‘the bie from the vampire in a 2009 interview in the book dear old monster.’’ ‘‘Of Two Minds, Simultaneously.’’ As a child he fell for Lookout Frankenstein‘sArts and Letters Monster ‘‘because he’s clumsy, shy and misunderstood; Dracula because he’s dandyish, painted stitched- together creatures alongside lusty Boris Karloff nocturnal and misunderstood.’’ in 1931. He called Lookoutyoung men, Lookout wiselyArts pinpointed and Letters Arts the reasonsand Letters for this Bill Condon’s 1998 film ‘‘Gods and Monsters’’ creat- the figure he queer sympathy asLookout well as whateverArts divides and Letters the zom- became famous for ed both a kind of queer origin story and creation myth playing ‘‘the bie from the vampirepainted in a 2009 stitched- interview together in thecreatures book alongside lusty dear old monster.’’Boris Karloff ‘‘Of Two Minds, Simultaneously.’’youngfor men, the wiselyMonster’s As a child pinpointed continuinghe fell thefor reasons presence for thisin popular cul- in 1931. He called ture. An account of the last days of James Whale, di- the figure he Frankenstein‘s Monsterqueerpainted sympathy ‘‘because stitched- as he’s well together clumsy, as whatever creatures shy divides alongside the zom- lusty Borisbecame Karloff famous for painted stitched-rector togetherpainted of stitched- creatures the 1931 together alongside adaptation creatures lusty alongside of ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ lusty the Boris Karloff Karloffinplaying 1931. He ‘‘the called and misunderstood;bie Dracula fromyoung the men,because vampire wisely he’s in pinpointeda dandyish, 2009 interview the reasons in the forbook this in 1931. He called young men, wiselyyoung pinpointed men, wisely the pinpointed reasons for the this reasons for this in 1931. He thedear called figure old monster.’’ he nocturnal and misunderstood.’’‘‘Of queerTwofilm Minds, sympathy begins Simultaneously.’’ as as awell tame as whatever biopic As a child butdivides soonhe fellthe mutatesforzom- into a thethe figure figure becamehe he famous for queer sympathy as well as whatever divides the zom- became famous famousplaying for ‘‘thefor queer sympathyFrankenstein‘s as well as whatever Monster ‘‘becausedivides the he’s zom- clumsy, shy playing ‘‘the Bill Condon’s 1998 filmbievery ‘‘Gods biefrom from peculiarthe and the vampire Monsters’’vampire discursion in in a a2009 creat-2009 interview interview about thein thethe seductions book book and dear old monster.’’ bie from the vampire in a 2009 interview in the book dearplaying old monster.’’ ‘‘the ed both a kind of queerand ‘‘Oforiginmisunderstood;strangeness ‘‘OfTwo Twostory Minds, Minds, and Simultaneously.’’ ofDraculacreationSimultaneously.’’ flesh. because myth It featuresAs As he’s aa childchild dandyish, hehe Ian fell fell forMcKellen for as dear old monster.’’ ‘‘Of Two Minds,nocturnalFrankenstein‘s Simultaneously.’’ and misunderstood.’’ Monster As a child ‘‘because he fell he’s for clumsy, shy for the Monster’s continuingWhaleFrankenstein‘s presence fighting in Monster populara naked ‘‘because cul- handyman he’s clumsy, played shy by Bren- Frankenstein‘sBill and Monster Condon’sand misunderstood; misunderstood; ‘‘because 1998 film Dracula ‘‘Godshe’sDracula clumsy, andbecause because Monsters’’ shy he’s dandyish,dandyish, creat- ture. An account of the lastdan days Fraser, of James his beefcakeWhale, di- head obscured by a gas rector ofand the misunderstood; 1931 adaptationed bothnocturnalnocturnal a kindDracula of and of‘‘Frankenstein,’’ and queer misunderstood.’’ because misunderstood.’’ origin he’s story thedandyish, and creation myth nocturnal and misunderstood.’’mask,BillBill Condon’s Condon’ssteamy 1998 1998 poolside film film ‘‘Gods ‘‘Gods shenanigans and and Monsters’’Monsters’’ straightcreat- creat- from a film begins as a tamefor thebiopic Monster’s but soon continuing mutates presence into a in popular cul- Bill Condon’sture.ed 1998AnHoncho bothed account bothfilm a kind a‘‘Gods kind magazine ofof ofthequeer and queer last Monsters’’origin origin dreamscapedays story storyof James creat- and and creation Whale, and evocations myth mythdi- of a very peculiar discursion for about the Monster’s the seductions continuing and presence in popular cul- ed both a kindrector offor queer ofthe the Monster’s origin 1931 story adaptation continuing and creation of presence ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ myth in popular the cul- strangeness of flesh. Itputrid ture. features An soldier account Ian strobe-lit McKellenof the last days by as oflightning James Whale, strikes. di- Whale’s for the Monster’sfilmture. begins continuing An asaccount a tame presence of biopicthe last in but populardays soon of Jamesmutates cul- Whale, into a di- Whale fighting a naked unrequitedhandymanrector of the playedlust 1931 adaptationfor by the Bren- hunk of ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ kinkily inverts the the long- ture. An accountveryrector peculiarof the of last the discursion 1931days adaptationof James about Whale, ofthe ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ seductions di- and the dan Fraser, his beefcakeing-loathingfilm head begins obscured as dynamicsa tame by biopic a between gasbut soon mutates Monster into aand Doctor, rector of thestrangeness 1931film very adaptationbegins peculiar of as flesh. a oftame discursion ‘‘Frankenstein,’’ It biopic features about but Iansoon the the McKellenseductions mutates into and as a mask, steamy poolside shenanigansbut a hint of straight romance from still a quivers through the pro- film begins Whaleas avery tame strangenessfighting peculiar biopic a naked discursionbut of flesh.soon handyman Itmutates about features the playedinto Ian seductions a McKellen by Bren- and as Honcho magazine dreamscapestrangeness and of evocations flesh. It features of a Ian McKellen as very peculiardan discursion Fraser,ceedingsWhale his fighting about and beefcake a at thenaked its seductions headclimax, handyman obscured the andplayed Monster by by a Bren- gas (or Fraser?) Whaledan fighting Fraser, hisa naked beefcake handyman head obscured played byby aBren- gas putrid soldierstrangeness strobe-litmask, of flesh.byescorts steamy lightning It Whalepoolsidefeatures strikes. overshenanigans Ian Whale’s McKelleneldritch straight moorland as from toa his death. danmask, Fraser, steamy his beefcakepoolside shenanigans head obscured straight by from a gas a unrequitedWhale lust fighting for Honchothe hunka(Condon naked magazine kinkily handyman has inverts dreamscape been played theenlisted long- andby toBren- evocations direct a new of a version of Whale’s ‘‘Bride of the character of Frankenstein’s Monster. I wake up, put on makeup mask,Honcho steamy magazine poolside dreamscape shenanigans and straight evocations from of aa ing-loathing dynamicsputrid between soldier Monsterstrobe-lit andby lightning Doctor, strikes. Whale’s dan Fraser, hisHoncho Frankenstein’’ beefcakeputrid magazine soldier head strobe-lit obscureddreamscapein 2019.) by lightning by and a gasstrikes. evocations Whale’s of a and scare people.’’ but a hint of romanceunrequited still quivers lust for through the hunk the kinkily pro- inverts the long- mask, steamy putridpoolsideunrequited soldier shenanigans luststrobe-lit for the straightby hunk lightning kinkily from invertsstrikes. a the Whale’s long- But for the original Monster, being scary is always coupled with be- ceedings and at its ing-loathingclimax, the dynamicsMonster (orbetween Fraser?) Monster and Doctor, Honcho magazineunrequitedHOMOEROTICing-loathing dreamscape lust dynamics for andthe SUBTEXT hunkevocations between kinkily Monsterwas ofinverts haunting a and the Doctor, long- ‘‘Frankenstein’’ way before ing sad. This melancholy is captured in the artist Alex Da Corte’s new escorts Whale overbut eldritch a hintbut aof moorland hint romance of romance tostill his stillquivers death. quivers through through the the pro- pro- putrid soldier strobe-liting-loathing by dynamicslightning betweenstrikes. Whale’sMonster and Doctor, ceedings‘‘Godsceedings and atand and its atMonsters,’’climax, its climax, the Monsterthe though: Monster (or (or BorisFraser?) Fraser?) Karloff’s fond nickname for film ‘‘Slow Graffiti,’’ which premiered at Secession in Vienna this sum- (Condonunrequited has been enlisted lustbut for atheto hint direct hunk of romance akinkily new version invertsstill quivers of the Whale’s long- through ‘‘Bride the pro-of the character of Frankenstein’s Monster. I wake up, put on makeup hisescorts favorite Whale role over was eldritch ‘‘the moorland dear toold his monster.’’ death. Even in the book, the mer. In the work, the artist roams around a laboratory-like environ- Frankenstein’’ing-loathing in 2019.)escorts dynamicsceedings Whale between and over at its eldritchMonster climax, moorlandthe and Monster Doctor, to (or his Fraser?) death. and scare people.’’ (Condonattacks(Condon has been onhas theenlistedbeen Monster enlisted to direct to direct spoken a new a new version by version its ofcreator of Whale’s Whale’s mimic ‘‘Bride‘‘Bride of theof the rabidthe character character noise of Frankenstein’s ofment Frankenstein’s seemingly Monster. Monster. crossedI wake up,I wake with put on up, the makeup put interior on makeup of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, lit- but a hint of romanceescortsFrankenstein’’ Whalestill quivers over in 2019.) eldritch through moorland the pro- to his death. But for the andoriginal scare Monster,people.’’ being scary is always coupled with be- Frankenstein’’ in 2019.) and scare people.’’ HOMOEROTICceedings SUBTEXT and at(Condon itsof was climax,a trans/homophobic hashaunting beenthe Monster enlisted ‘‘Frankenstein’’ to(or direct chorus:Fraser?) a new way ‘‘More version before hideousof Whale’sing sad. than‘‘Bride This belongs of melancholy Butthe for character to the hu- originalis captured oftered Frankenstein’sMonster, in with thebeing domesticartist scary Monster. Alex is always junk,Da I wake Corte’scoupled baubles, up, with newput be- on fiery makeup torches and food — all the But for the original Monster, being scary is always coupled with be- ‘‘Gods andescorts Monsters,’’ Whale Frankenstein’’ over manity’’though:HOMOEROTIC eldritch Borisor in moorland‘‘some 2019.)SUBTEXT Karloff’s other towas hisfond species.’’haunting death. nickname ‘‘Frankenstein’’ It’s alsofor afilm chronicle way ‘‘Slow before Graffiti,’’ ofing the andsad. electric which scareThis melancholy people.’’ premiered while is captured wearingat Secession in athe deluxe artistin Vienna Alex Monster Da this Corte’s sum- mask, new a dead ringer for a fully made- HOMOEROTIC SUBTEXT was haunting ‘‘Frankenstein’’ way before ing sad. This melancholy is captured in the artist Alex Da Corte’s new his favorite(Condon role haswas been ‘‘thefascination ‘‘Godsenlisted dear andold to Monsters,’’monster.’’direct flowing a new though: betweenEven version in Boris the oftwo Whale’s Karloff’sbook, men the ‘‘Bridefondand nicknamemer.the of accompanyingInthe thefor character work,film ‘‘Slow theBut of rum- artistFrankenstein’sforGraffiti,’’ the roams original whichup Boris aroundpremiered Monster, Monster. Karloff. a atbeinglaboratory-like SecessionI wakeLike scary up, Dain is Vienna always putCorte’s environ- on this coupledmakeup earliersum- with video be- ‘‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2’’ ‘‘Gods hisand favorite Monsters,’’ role was though: ‘‘the dear Boris old monster.’’ Karloff’s Even fond in nickname the book, the for mer.film In ‘‘Slow the work, Graffiti,’’ the artist which roams premiered around a at laboratory-like Secession in environ- Vienna this sum- attacks Frankenstein’’on the Monster inHOMOEROTIC bles spoken2019.) of repressedby its SUBTEXT creator desire wasmimic haunting that the destroy rabid ‘‘Frankenstein’’ noise them. ment way seeminglyand before scare people.’’ingcrossed sad. This with melancholy the(2010), interior ‘‘Slow is capturedof Pee-Wee’s Graffiti’’ in the Playhouse, artist stages Alex an Da lit- eerie Corte’s romance new between materials, his favorite‘‘Godsattacks and role on Monsters,’’ thewas Monster ‘‘the dearthough: spoken old by Borismonster.’’ its creator Karloff’s Even mimic fond in the the nickname rabid book, noise the for mentmer.film seemingly In‘‘Slow the Graffiti,’’work, crossed the withwhich artist the premiered interiorroams ofaround atPee-Wee’s Secession a laboratory-like Playhouse, in Vienna lit- this environ- sum- of a trans/homophobic chorus:For the ‘‘More trans hideous woman than writer belongs and totheorist hu- teredSusan with Stryker,But domestic for the any original junk,iden- baubles,Monster,probing fierybeing how torchesscary they, is too, andalways might food coupled — be all misunderstood. with the be- Electrical cable imper- attackshis offavorite on a trans/homophobicthe Monster role was spoken‘‘the chorus: dear by oldits ‘‘More creatormonster.’’ hideous mimic Even than the inbelongs therabid book, to noise hu- the teredmentmer. with seeminglyIn domesticthe work, crossed junk, the baubles,artist with roams the fiery interior torchesaround of anda Pee-Wee’s laboratory-like food — all Playhouse, the environ- lit- manity’’HOMOEROTIC or ‘‘some other SUBTEXT species.’’manity’’ orwas It’s ‘‘some hauntingalso other a chronicle species.’’ ‘‘Frankenstein’’ It’sof thealso electrica chronicle way before ofwhile the electric wearinging sad. whileThis a deluxe wearingmelancholy Monster a deluxe is mask, capturedMonster a mask,dead in the aringer deadartist ringer for Alex a forfully Da a fullyCorte’s mademade- new of aattacks trans/homophobictification on the with Monster the chorus: spokenMonster ‘‘More by itswas hideous creator wrought mimicthan belongsfrom the rabid Gothic to noisehu- intensities teredment withseemingly of domestic sonates crossed junk, withspaghetti baubles, the interior fieryand of torchesa blackPee-Wee’s andlipstick Playhouse, food —acts all aslit- the the lonesome Monster’s fascination‘‘Gods flowing and Monsters,’’ betweenfascination two though: men flowing and Boris between the Karloff’s accompanying two men fond and nickname the rum- accompanying upfor Borisfilm rum- Karloff. ‘‘Slowup BorisGraffiti,’’ Like Karloff. Da whichCorte’s Like premiered Da earlier Corte’s video earlier at Secession ‘‘Chelsea video ‘‘Chelsea in HotelVienna Hotel No. this No. 2’’ sum- 2’’ manity’’ofhorror a trans/homophobic or ‘‘some and othermelancholy. species.’’ chorus: Never It’s ‘‘More also flinching hideous a chronicle than from of belongs the the electric physical to hu- whiletered disorien- wearing with domestic a cigarette.deluxe junk, Monster baubles,It wouldn’t mask, fiery a deadbe torches a ringermad and scientistfor food a fully — all propositionmade- the to state that this bles of repressedhis favorite desire role wasthatbles ‘‘the ofdestroy repressed dear them. old desire monster.’’ that destroy Even them. in the book, the(2010), mer. ‘‘Slow In (2010),the Graffiti’’ work, ‘‘Slow stagesthe Graffiti’’ artist an stagesroams eerie an romancearound eerie romance a betweenlaboratory-like between materials, materials, environ- fascinationmanity’’ flowingor ‘‘some between other species.’’ two mentation It’s and also orthe a chronicle gore accompanying that of the sexual electric rum- reassignment upwhile Boris wearing Karloff. adiscombobulating deluxeLike Da Monster Corte’s mask, earlier vision a deadvideo of ringer ‘‘Chelsea the fordomestic a Hotel fully made- No. world 2’’ — a domain of gooey For theattacks trans on woman the Monster writerFor theandspoken trans theorist bywoman its Susan creator writer Stryker, and mimic theorist anythe Susan rabididen- Stryker, noiseprobing anyment iden- how seemingly they,probing too, how mightcrossed they, betoo, with misunderstood. might the be interior misunderstood. ofElectrical Pee-Wee’s Electrical cable Playhouse, cable imper- imper- lit- blesfascination of tificationrepressed flowingwith desire the betweenMonster that destroy wastwoentails, wroughtmen them. and from she the Gothic accompanying kicks intensities off her rum- of ferocious sonates(2010),up Boris spaghetti 1994‘‘Slow Karloff. and Graffiti’’confusions Likea black Da stages lipstick Corte’s — an actsrelates earlier eerie as the romancetovideo lonesome queer ‘‘Chelsea betweenfeelingsMonster’s Hotel materials, of No.alienation 2’’ from ‘‘home,’’ since tificationof witha trans/homophobic the Monster was chorus: wrought ‘‘More from hideous Gothic thanintensities belongs of to hu-sonatestered spaghetti with domestic and a black junk, lipstick baubles, acts fiery as the torches lonesome and foodMonster’s — all the If vampiresForbles thehorror of transrepressed and woman occupymelancholy. desire writer that Never and destroy flinching essaytheorist them. ‘‘My from Susan theWords Stryker, physical to anydisorien- Victor iden- Frankensteincigarette.probing(2010), It how‘‘Slow wouldn’t they, Graffiti’’that’s be too, a madmight where, stages scientist be misunderstood. anas proposition eerie the romancecritic to andElectricalstate between thatpoet this cable Wayne materials, imper- Koestenbaum points out, horror andmanity’’ melancholy. or tification‘‘some NeverFor other withthe flinchingtransspecies.’’ the Monster woman fromIt’s writer alsowas thetation a wrought physical andchronicle or theorist gore from disorien- thatof Susan the Gothic sexual electric Stryker, reassignmentintensitiescigarette. anywhile iden- Itof wearing wouldn’tdiscombobulatingsonatesprobing a bedeluxe spaghetti how a mad they, Monstervision scientist and too, of amightthe mask,black domestic proposition be lipsticka misunderstood. dead world ringeracts to — stateasa domainfor the Electrical athat lonesome fully of this gooey made- cable Monster’s imper- Above the Village of Chamounix’’ with a ‘‘we are supposed to learn how to be straight.’’ Da Corte considers him- fascinationhorror flowingatification magical andtation between melancholy. with or the goreroletwo Monster men thatNever and sexualentails, wasflinching the wrought sheaccompanying reassignment from kicks from the off Gothic herphysical rum- ferociousdiscombobulating intensities disorien-up 1994 Boris of confusions Karloff.cigarette.sonates vision —Like spaghetti It relatesof wouldn’t theDa toCorte’sdomestic andqueer be a feelingsblackaearlier mad world lipstick ofscientist video alienation — aacts ‘‘Chelseadomain proposition asfrom the ‘‘home,’’ of Hotellonesome gooey to sinceNo.state Monster’s2’’ that this bles of repressedIf vampireshorror desireentails, and that melancholy. occupy she destroy kicks tation Neverthem. offessay her or flinching description‘‘My gore ferocious Words that from tosexual 1994 theVictorof herphysical reassignmentFrankensteinconfusions own disorien- (2010),rebirth — ‘‘Slowthat’srelates thatdiscombobulatingcigarette. where, makes Graffiti’’ to queer asIt wouldn’tthe stagesfeelings selfcritic vision a andbe an sculptor;of aof eeriepoet alienationmad the Wayne domestic romancescientist he Koestenbaumfrom investigates proposition world between ‘‘home,’’ — points a materials, since todomain the state out, properties thatof gooey this of his body on video, in the erotic life Above the Village of Chamounix’’ with a ‘‘we are supposed to learn how to be straight.’’ Da Corte considers him- If vampires occupyFor the trans a woman magicalessay writer ‘‘My role Wordsand theoristentails, totation Victor Susan sheit or sound Frankenstein gore kicks Stryker, that offlike sexual herany one ferociousiden- that’sof reassignment Frankenstein’s probingwhere, 1994 ashowconfusions discombobulatingthe they, maca-critic too, — and might relates wonderingpoet visionbe to misunderstood.Wayne queer of the at feelings Koestenbaum domestichow it of Electrical can alienation world become points — cable afrom domain out,a imper-scarecrow, ‘‘home,’’ of gooey since a tribute act, a freak. 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Itthat’s wouldn’t where, be as a themad critic scientist and poet proposition Wayne Koestenbaum to state that thispoints out, asa magical cultivatedof adolescentsdescription role loners, of herAbove ownbre rebirth theprocedures.an Village unnatural that ‘‘The ofmakes Chamounix’’ transsexual body.self It abody with sculptor; is is thea Frankensteinish product‘‘we he are investigates supposed of ramificationsreimagines to the learn properties of how all sculpture thisto be ofare straight.’’ hiselectrifying body (a mediumDa on —Corte video,Da Corte considers ordinarily him- dedicated to preserving in the erotic life tation or goreAbove that the sexual Village reassignment of Chamounix’’ discombobulating with a ‘‘we are supposedvision of tothe learn domestic how to worldbe straight.’’ — a domain Da Corte of considers gooey him- asa magical cultivatedit sound role likeloners, one description of Frankenstein’san unnaturalmedical of her body. ownscience. maca- Itrebirth is the Itwondering that productis a makes technological of at howreimaginesself it a can sculptor; con- sculpturebecome inanimate he (aa investigatesscarecrow, medium material) ordinarily a thetribute properties dedicated as act, alive a freak. to of and preserving his The bloody, body on ready video, to melt. in theFrankenstein’s erotic life description of her own rebirth that makes self a sculptor; he investigates the properties of his body on video, of adolescents in thebre erotic procedures.entails, life she ‘‘Theit sound kicksmedical transsexual like off science. herone ferociousof bodyIt Frankenstein’s is a istechnological 1994Frankensteinish confusionsmaca- con- inanimatewondering —ramifications relates material) at to how queer asof it aliveall can feelings this andbecome bloody,are of alienationelectrifying a scarecrow,ready to melt. from —a tribute ‘‘home,’’Da Corte act, since a freak. The Frankenstein’s it soundstruction. like one of It Frankenstein’s is flesh torn maca- apart andwondering sewn at how itStaggering can become asomnambulistically scarecrow, a tribute act, around a freak. Thethe room or trying to com- If vampiresof occupy adolescentsan unnaturalessay ‘‘My body.bre Words struction.procedures. It is to the Victor It productis ‘‘The flesh Frankenstein transsexualtorn of apartreimagines and body that’ssewn is sculpturewhere, FrankensteinishStaggering as (athe medium somnambulisticallycritic ramifications and ordinarily poet Wayne around of dedicated all Koestenbaumthe this room are to or electrifying preserving trying points to com- —out, Da Corte as cultivated loners,Monsterof Monsteradolescents isis their their bre procedures.together ‘‘The again transsexual in a shape body other is Frankensteinishthan that prehend ramifications its mysterious of all this are debris, electrifying Da —Corte Da Corte recaptures the fact that the as cultivated loners,Above thean Village unnaturaltogether of Chamounix’’again body. in a It shape is with theother producta than‘‘we that ofare prehendsupposedreimagines its tomysterious learn sculpture how debris, to (a be medium Da straight.’’ Corte ordinarilyrecaptures Da Corte the dedicated considers fact that to the him- preserving a magical rolenightmarish medical science. 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It is fleshmedical son,torn the apart science.Monster and Itdeals sewn is a with technological a vertiginousStaggering con- iment somnambulisticallyinanimate of heartbreak. material) It is aroundan as experiment alive theand roombloody, in empathy or ready trying for to the melt.to supposed- com- Monster is their Frankenstein’sit sound likestruction. one ofson, Frankenstein’sIt is the flesh Monster torn apartmaca- deals andwondering withsewn a vertiginous atStaggering how it can somnambulistically becomeiment aof scarecrow, heartbreak. around a tribute It theis an act,room experiment a freak. or trying The to in com- empathy for the supposed- queer togethercounterpart. again in a struction.shapealienation other Itfrom is than fleshhis ownthat torn body apartprehend and and the im-sewnits mysterious ly unlovable,Staggering debris, continuing somnambulistically Da Corte the queer recaptures tradition around the of the sympathy fact room that or for thetrying the to com- of adolescentsMonster is theirbre procedures.together ‘‘The alienationagain transsexual in a shape from body other his is own thanFrankensteinish bodythat andprehend the ramifications im-its mysteriously unlovable, of debris,all this Da are continuing Corte electrifying recaptures the — queerDa the Corte fact tradition that the of sympathy for the nightmarish Monsterin which is their it was born.’’togetherpossibility Like anyagain of trans passing in a per-shape as a ‘‘normal’’otherMonster’s than per- that rage Monster liesprehend in that his its resonatesabandonment mysterious with thedebris, and moment isolation. Da inCorte Shelley’s He’srecaptures novelan embod- where the fact he that the nightmarishan unnaturalin which body. it Itwas is born.’’ the product Like any of trans reimagines per- Monster’s sculpture rage (a lies medium in his abandonment ordinarily dedicated and isolation. to preserving He’s an embod- as cultivated loners,nightmarishson.son, In the Shelley’s Monster words, deals ‘‘Iin hadwhich with neverpossibility ita wasseenvertiginous born.’’ a being of Like passingresembling imentany trans as meof heartbreak. a orper- ‘‘normal’’finallyMonster’s speaks It per-is an rageof experimenthis Monsterlies torment: in his ‘‘Manabandonment inthat empathy willresonates not forassociate and the withisolation. supposed- with the me.’’ He’s moment So an embod- in Shelley’s novel where he queer counterpart. claimed medical any intercourse science.son, the with It Monster is me a .technological . . Who deals was with I? con- Whata vertiginous wasinanimate I? muchiment material) of Daof heartbreak.Corte’s as alive video and fixatesIt is bloody, an on experiment odd ready dislocations to in melt. empathy of intimacy for — the the supposed- Frankenstein’squeerqueer counterpart. son.counterpart. alienation In Shelley’s from hiswords, son,own ‘‘I thebody had Monster and never the deals seenim- with aly beinga vertiginous unlovable, resembling continuingiment me of heartbreak.or the finally queer It is traditionspeaks an experiment of of his sympathy intorment: empathy for for‘‘Man the the supposed- will not associate with me.’’ So Whence didstruction. I come?’’ alienationIt Stryker is flesh doesn’t fromtorn aparthisclaim own thatand body everyone sewn and thetransi- Staggeringim- Monsterly unlovable, somnambulistically caresses continuinghis face with around theham; queer hands the traditionroomcoated orwith trying of slime sympathy totouch com- for the claimedpossibility any of intercourse passingalienation as a with‘‘normal’’ from me his .own per-. . Who bodyMonster wasand the I? that im- What resonatesly wasunlovable, with I? the continuingmuch moment of Da the in Corte’s Shelley’s queer traditionvideo novel fixates ofwhere sympathy on he odd fordislocations the of intimacy — the Monster is theirtioning istogether doomed to again possibilitylive within in a shape a of horror passing other movie, as than but a ‘‘normal’’ thatshe does prehend sug- per- the itsMonster back mysterious of histhat neck, resonates debris, that zone Da with whereCorte the shivers momentrecaptures live. in ‘‘Love Shelley’sthe fact me tender, thatnovel the where he son. In Shelley’s words, Whence‘‘Igest had that never everyonedid seenI come?’’ identifying a beingpossibility Stryker resembling as other of doesn’t passingcan meseize or as claimthe a mythologyfinally‘‘normal’’ that speaks everyone of per- love ofMonster hisme transi- true,’’torment: that a narrator resonates Monster‘‘Man intones will with caresses notin the a gloomy associatemoment his voice, inface with Shelley’s as with the me.’’ Monster ham;novel So where hands he coated with slime touch nightmarishson.son. In Shelley’s In Shelley’sin words, which words, ‘‘Iit washad‘‘I had neverborn.’’ never seen Like seen a any being a being trans resembling resembling per- Monster’s me me or or finally ragefinally liesspeaks speaks in his ofof abandonment hishis torment:torment: ‘‘Man‘‘Manand isolation. will notnot He’sassociateassociate an embod- withwith me.’’me.’’ So So claimed any intercoursetioningmonstrousness with is me doomed . . .for Who their to wasown live ends, I? within What using ita was tohorror prove I? they’re movie,much nothing of but Da sheCorte’scontinues does video thesug- fixateszombifiedthe on explorationback odd dislocations of his of the neck, world of thatintimacy symptomatic zone — where the of his shivers live. ‘‘Love me tender, claimedclaimed any any intercourseson, intercourse the Monster with with me deals me . . . .with . Who . Who a was vertiginous was I? I? What What was iment was I? I? of heartbreak.muchmuch of of Da Da ItCorte’s Corte’s is an videoexperiment video fixatesfixates in on empathy odd dislocations for the supposed-of of intimacy intimacy — — the the Whencequeer did counterpart. I come?’’ Strykerlike the doesn’t ordinary claim folk who that chase everyone the Monster transi- out of Monster town. 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2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd 48 9/23/17 3:02 AM 2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd 48 48 9/23/179/23/17 3:02 3:02 AM AM 2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd48 48 T: The New York Times Style Magazine 9/23/17 3:02 AM

2463-2464_look_frankenstei.indd 48 9/23/17 3:02 AM MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

An Artist’s Eccentricities, Fueled by a Signature Style

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A group of 16 kindergartners on a tour of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art here stumbled upon a gallery last week where a show was being installed and the children halted in their tracks.

“Look!” said one boy, pointing across a room made eerie by blue and red neon. “Real water! Real ducks!” The water was indeed real, in a shallow white pond where the light made it look like strawberry milk. The ducks were actually swans, motorized plastic ones, circling one another in the water with fake candles rising from their backs.

Kennedy, Randy. “An Artist’s Eccentricities, Fueled by a Signature Style.” , March 28, 2016, p. C1. The New York Times If the scene felt like a contemporary-art remake of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” its creator, the Philadelphia artist Alex Da Corte, didn’t look the part of that top-hatted pied piper. A boyish 35, he was dressed that morning in a threadbare T-shirt and a crumpled Lacoste cap that had been worn nearly to death. He was walking in his socks through galleries where he and a band of devoted friends and assistants had been working for weeks to perfect thousands of tiny details for the most ambitious show of his career, “Free Roses,” which just went on view and continues through January.

The immersive world the exhibition creates can seem Wonka-ish, candy-colored and animated, with deranged elements like mirror-striped floors, flying bats, plastic fruits and vegetables, a giant hoagie made of rubber, and a sculptural rendition of the couch in “The Simpsons.” But Mr. Da Corte, who has become highly sought-after in recent years for a riotous post-post-Pop sensibility, significantly darkens the picture around the corner from the romantic swans, where a video shows a man (Mr. Da Corte’s boyfriend at the time) shooting a syringe-full of Coca-Cola into his arm, drawn from a plastic liter bottle, in a work inspired by Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell.”

As he once described it, his goal is to challenge the “rules that we have for what is beauty or what is optimism,” moving beyond kitsch and Pop irony into a kind of late-capitalist sublime that can be ravishing and terrifying at the same time.

“If taste is the thing that guides you,” Mr. Da Corte (pronounced da-COR-tah) said in an interview

Kennedy, Randy. “An Artist’s Eccentricities, Fueled by a Signature Style.” , March 28, 2016, p. C1. The New York Times during an installation break, “then how can you step outside that and try to look at everything every day as if it’s new? To live somewhere up here?” He made a gesture with both hands to the space above his head, and added: “I always like to hope that I have no taste, which is not the same thing as tastelessness.”

Mr. Da Corte’s art-world reputation as something of a gleefully sinister provocateur is belied in person; he is affable, humble and speaks with great clarity about the art-historical underpinnings of his work. He grew up around Philadelphia in a large, extended, close-knit family and spent several years as a child in Caracas, Venezuela, where his father was born and raised. The electric colors and material exuberance that have become his trademarks derive partly from that South American heritage. “Piñata parties were real,” he said. “They were a very big deal. And I remember waking up every day and seeing mangoes on the ground, which didn’t happen in Pennsylvania.”

After attending the School of Visual Arts in New York with thoughts of becoming a Disney animator, and later earning an M.F.A. from Yale, he came to notice in the art world fairly quickly in 2010 with a three-minute video inspired by and set to the 1974 Leonard Cohen song “Chelsea Hotel #2.” Mr. Da Corte made the video shortly after his car, with his computer, clothes and all of his studio notes, had been stolen from a street in New York. Depressed, he returned to Philadelphia and went to one of his favorite no-frills supermarkets, Fine Fare on West Girard Street in the beleaguered Ludlow neighborhood, and loaded a shopping cart, mostly with processed food and plastic.

With a cellphone camera and a white backdrop, he took the things he had bought and in only a few hours made the video, a stark poetic progression in which pairs of dirty hands perform a kind of ballet with the cheapest consumer goods — slicing a piece of bologna in half, stacking white bread, crumpling a plastic happy-face bag attached to a fan, pouring purple dish soap into a neon-green clothes hamper.

“Watching it still kind of breaks my heart, because it makes me think that I wish it could always be that easy,” Mr. Da Corte said, sitting on the ground in the hallucinogenic-patterned gallery where the video runs.

Kennedy, Randy. “An Artist’s Eccentricities, Fueled by a Signature Style.” , March 28, 2016, p. C1. The New York Times Susan Cross, the curator of visual arts at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, who organized the show there, said that when she first became aware of his work in 2011, that video and other pieces fascinated her because “they were so chaotic and so weird and disorienting, but the more time you spent with them the more you saw how formally rigorous they were.”

Like many artists of his generation, Mr. Da Corte sees his work as something fundamentally unstable, as material to be remixed, like music. The show has borrowed pieces from collectors and recombined them to be, at times, almost unrecognizable.

He also sees the lines between his work and the work of artists he admires as blurry at best. In paintinglike works he makes by sandwiching three-dimensional objects between glass and foam board, he sometimes incorporates pieces by friends, like the painter Sascha Braunig and the sculptor Nancy Lupo. A major work in the show here, the three-hour video “Eastern Sports,” is a collaboration with the artist Jayson Musson (known for his invention of the alter-ego art-world scourge Hennessy Youngman). And last year, at the Luxembourg & Dayan gallery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Mr. Da Corte created work with borrowed pieces by blue-chip forefathers of postmodern anxiety like Mike Kelley and Robert Gober. Roberta Smith, in The New York Times, wrote that last year’s show dazzled “at every turn,” weaving “confounding narratives about innocence and decadence, mass production and eccentricity.”

In an era when mass culture can make eccentricity seem like just another efficiently manufactured product, Mr. Da Corte is well aware of the conundrum he and other Pop-focused artists of his generation inhabit. But in a Beckettian “can’t-go-on-I’ll-go-on” way, he also believes beauty and meaning are still possible, if maybe only harder to find and understand.

“I love big-box stores,” he said, inspecting a work composed of tables with surreal, precisely arranged tableaus of big-box flotsam and jetsam, which also appear in his videos. “To me, these things are like meeting your heroes, like meeting the stars in the movies you’ve just seen. They make me happy.”

Kennedy, Randy. “An Artist’s Eccentricities, Fueled by a Signature Style.” , March 28, 2016, p. C1. The New York Times MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

NORTH ADAMS — It is unreasonable — it is actually mad — to expect as much as we do of objects. We feel them pulsing with possibility in our jeans pockets. We squeeze them until they squirt sauce onto our plates. We slice them and toast them and suck them and cradle them, and all the time we want something from them.

In functional terms, that something is simple. In psychological terms, what we want so far surpasses anything the objects could possibly provide that to reflect on the mismatch is to become humiliatingly aware of a low drone of hysteria inside us.

You’ll know what I’m talking about as soon as you enter “Free Roses,” a demented, fluorescent, and at times quite brilliant show of sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations by Alex Da Corte at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The show surveys 10 years of work by the 35-year-old, Philadelphia-based artist. Filling several large, contiguous galleries, Da Corte addresses — in a sophisticated but still-developing idiom that feels at once funny and sinister, familiar and fresh — sex, suburbia, symbolism, and stuff.

What kind of stuff? Bright-colored stuff. Food. Plastics. Plastic foods. Food dye. Liquids. Ikea furniture. Beanbags shaped like burgers. Artificial Christmas trees. Acrylic fingernails. Rhinestones. Stuffed dogs. Circling bats. Sliced bologna.

Smee, Sebastian. “Stuff and Nonsense: Fantastic Universes Unfold in Spellbinding Show at MASS MoCA.” , April 8, 2016, pp. N1, N4. Boston Globe That’s right. It’s random. And yet it’s all tighter, and smarter, than it sounds. Da Corte’s work has roots both in Pop Art (particularly Claes Oldenburg) and Surrealism, and shares a love of material profusion and rampaging symbolism with the likes of Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw.

He is part of a new generation of artists who dabble in traditional media like sculpture and painting, but truly excel at video and wildly theatrical presentation.

Born in New Jersey, Da Corte spent several years as a child in Caracas. He was brought up in a Catholic household, and encouraged to revere both Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and the art of caricature. As a boy, he wanted to work for Disney.

His discovery of contemporary art in New York coincided with a burgeoning awareness of his homosexuality. Both discoveries, dovetailing, lent his early work power, urgency, and a palpable freedom.

Da Corte’s work may be rooted in mass consumer culture, but it is filtered through French Symbolist poetry, modern and contemporary art, and above all, perhaps, Catholicism, with its flair for ritual and theatrics, and its incorrigible eagerness to propose one thing as another.

A similar drive, part mocking, part sincere, underlies all of Da Corte’s work. The sheer proliferation of symbols can overwhelm one’s desire to decode them — but then, that might be part of the game plan.

Smee, Sebastian. “Stuff and Nonsense: Fantastic Universes Unfold in Spellbinding Show at MASS MoCA.” , April 8, 2016, pp. N1, N4. Boston Globe The show kicks off with a sprawling ensemble of sculptural tableaux called “Lightning.” It’s inspired, like several other works in the show, by Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poem, “A Season in Hell.”

“Hallucinations are without number,” wrote Rimbaud in that work. Da Corte evidently wants to prove him right.

Two plastic swans with electric candles perched on their heads circle a splashing pool of pink water. A spider stands next to a giant tissue box.

A stuffed dog — a faithful replica of the dog that witnessed Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder — glides around a circular track. Two elongated mannequin arms with hands at both ends pass through the window of a pink house. On the other side are dozens of yellow tennis balls scattered on green carpet.

These and other tableaux are fastidiously arranged on neat squares of plush carpet surrounded by purple floorboards, under rectangular frames of colored neon light. The light lends everything a lurid, untrustworthy atmosphere. Bad things could happen here. They probably already have.

Da Corte regularly uses work by other artists in his installations. Usually it’s work by his peers. But here, in the final tableau of “Lightning,” he has surrounded Joseph Beuys’s “Lightning With Stag in Its Glare” — a cluster of bronze objects that invoke Christianity, socialism, and the spiritual power of nature — with carpet, bathing the whole ensemble in light.

The effect is to create a sense of travesty (the Beuys is usually regarded as a post-war masterpiece, heavy with symbolism). And yet it also reminds us that Beuys’s art was itself based on travesty. He was a myth-monger, an alchemist, a clown, a shaman.

“My life is threadbare,” wrote Rimbaud in “Lightning,” a chapter in “A Season in Hell.” He continued: “All right! Let’s sham and shirk. . . And we will go on enjoying ourselves, dreaming monstrous loves, fantastic universes, grumbling, and quarreling with the world’s appearances. . .”

More succinctly than any formulation I can contrive, those lines describe what Da Corte is up to: shamming and shirking, dreaming monstrous loves, inventing fantastic universes.

His collaged paintings and small sculptural tableaux are, it must be admitted, mediocre art school fare — too arbitrary to hold your attention.

His videos are a whole other thing. Neither as dark and anarchic as comparable videos by Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, nor as tightly constructed and brilliantly conceived as those by Mika Rottenberg, they are nonetheless exceptional. Da Corte’s feeling for form and color, and his ability to squeeze a nonchalant poetry out of the most banal-seeming objects, is spellbinding.

His breakthrough work, “Chelsea Hotel #2,” is a sequence of simple actions performed to the strains of Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name.

Smee, Sebastian. “Stuff and Nonsense: Fantastic Universes Unfold in Spellbinding Show at MASS MoCA.” , April 8, 2016, pp. N1, N4. Boston Globe Hands covered in dirt, flour paste, or aluminum come in and out of the picture frame.They flatten a loaf of sliced white bread; lift a slice of bologna from an upside-down orange bucket; peel a banana with a hoop ring attached to one end; and press back against a plastic bag inflated by a room fan.

A blue chair falls to the floor. A rose stem is wrapped in green plastic bubble wrap. Cherries are painted with red nail polish.

All this is projected on a screen in a room that has a mirrored floor with a red lattice pattern and walls with diagonal red-and-white stripes. At the opposite end is a low platform with a giant sub sandwich made from cast rubber.

The hoagie is fine. But the video is genuinely great. With just a few ingredients, all purchased from a cheap store in a moment of despair, Da Corte invented a private language and forged a visual poem from it. The three-minute video speaks with utmost concision and pathos of sex and love. Cohen’s song, by far his greatest, imbues it with the feeling that nothing more could possibly be said.

Da Corte, however, kept speaking — and very eloquently — in subsequent videos, culminating in 2014 with “Easternsports,” described as “a three-hour kaleidoscopic video-cum-telenovela.”

The four-screen installation, loosely based on Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” has a philosophical and frequently hilarious script by Jayson Musson, shown in subtitles, and shifting, minimalist music by Dev Hynes.

Da Corte’s slow-moving visuals — repetitive actions performed by actors in strange costumes in front of colorful, geometric backgrounds — are at once formally rigorous and kitschily grotesque. There’s a great comic undertow to it all.

Taut, camp, blindingly bright, and simultaneously open-hearted and scathing, it’s a major work of art, by an artist who doesn’t seem short of ideas, and feels dangerously in tune with the Zeitgeist.

ALEX DA CORTE: Free Roses

At Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams. Through Jan. 31, 2017. 413-662-2111, www.massmoca.org

Smee, Sebastian. “Stuff and Nonsense: Fantastic Universes Unfold in Spellbinding Show at MASS MoCA.” , April 8, 2016, pp. N1, N4. Boston Globe MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

By Brian Droitcour

Alex Da Corte adapts his work to the environments where he exhibits it, developing total installations that respond to the spirit and space of the venue. For “Free Roses,” his first museum survey, the Philadelphia-based artist has absorbed the atmosphere of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and transformed it turn. Like Dia: Beacon or Pittsburgh’s

Droitcour, Brian. “Coming Up Roses: Alex Da Corte at MASS MoCA.” , May 5, 2016. Art in America Mattress Factory, MASS MoCA is an industrial space repurposed for the display of art, and like those other institutions it often shows large-scale Minimalist sculpture. They gravitate toward such work for practical reasons—all that bulky hardware fills warehouse expanses better than dainty paintings—but there’s an aesthetic payoff, too; formal repetition haunts a former factory with the phantom of mass production. Exhibitions in this vein at MASS MoCA include Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings, a permanent installation since 2004, and Richard Nonas’s “The Man in the Empty Space,” on view through September, with new and old works that arrange wooden railroad ties, granite curbstones, and other rugged found materials around a massive stone chair.

No one would call Da Corte a Minimalist. He uses repetition and variation as a generative principle, as Minimalists do. But he ends up at maximalism via his own queer serialism, where iterations are sometimes straight and sometimes twisted. His work isn’t so much about mass production as it is about consumption. There’s a friction between the large-scale structures of manufacturing and distribution behind dollar-store abundance and the unique, unpredictable moments of contingency when shoppers’ tastes and appetites come into contact with individual things, and that’s the tension that animates Da Corte’s work. For his sprawling, multi-part Lightning (2015-16), Da Corte has divided the hangar-like second-floor gallery into zones with colored deep-pile carpeting, blocked out again from above with matching squares of neon light. Geometric reason spawns angels and demons. On an orange square, a black widow spider creeps behind a giant Kleenex box that offers up a cloud of a tissue cast in foam. On a pink square, a stuffed dog in a dog mask rides a circular track, and there’s more kinetic movement on a glossy pink rectangle where twin plastic swans with

Droitcour, Brian. “Coming Up Roses: Alex Da Corte at MASS MoCA.” , May 5, 2016. Art in America artificial candles in their necks swim around a pond dotted with lily pads and pancakes with syrupy pats of butter that mimic the lilies. On a corner of the yellow carpet at the installation’s edge, the quadrilateral geometry that organizes the floorplan mutates into a weedy growth: miniature plastic models of foodstuffs and other random items crawl on towers built from K’Nex construction toys that recall LeWitt’s cubed structures. Through juxtaposition, “Free Roses” plays up the theatricality of Minimalism in the other, more sober installations—turn around a wall at one end of “Free Roses,” and you find yourself in a stairwell eerily lit red; a door at the bottom deposits you at a sideways view of “The Man in the Empty Space.”

MASS MoCA’s worn brick walls fade into oblivion in the haze of color. The colored light saturates the sculptures, too, making details hard to discern. This can feel like a misstep—like when a chef overwhelms the complexity of his ingredients by adding too much sauce. The wall texts and accompanying brochure include Da Corte’s account of the materials that comprise the exhibition; these inventories read like a Rabelaisian litany made deadpan by the format of the caption. But the totalizing elements—which include sound and smell as well as color and light—set Da Corte apart from other artists who work by aggregating readymades. His results are a fantastic permutation of the thrift-store or dollar-store environments where his work begins, the straight shelves that host a riot of odds and ends, all awash in wan fluorescent light. He exaggerates that logic to reproduce it as his own. A purple patch of carpet in Lightning swarms with everything pumpkin—a deflated Halloween decoration, a plastic pumpkin, an actual gourd, transparent bottles of orange shampoo and lotion that probably carry the scent of pumpkin spice—and above it all leans a decorative

Droitcour, Brian. “Coming Up Roses: Alex Da Corte at MASS MoCA.” , May 5, 2016. Art in America window grate. The central circle with thin spokes radiating out to the rectangular frame suggests the plump ridged sections of a pumpkin growing outward from its round top, flattened in metal.

Da Corte works by analogies where the terms of comparison can change. This method is most apparent in a side gallery of four tabletop sculptures. The surfaces sit on sawhorses; two are mirrored panels, others are Ikea shelves still in wrapping. They hold objects that imply, variously, skins, sheathes or coatings; in Brown and Mercer (2013), a fiberglass foot stands opposite a laptop cover pierced by a rubber snake. The tableaux appear to be conceived as a series, but they are different sculptures, made between 2012 and 2015, united here by their similarities, and by a mechanical bat that inscribes the space from above as it flies around on a circular track, red eyes flashing.

Some of the tabletop tableaux, or other arrangements like them, were used in a 2012 series of videos. Video is an important part of Da Corte’s work because it shows objects in movement, that these things are not static but part of a trajectory of possibility, an encounter. In A Season in Hell (2012), an athletic young man with a clean-cut hairstyle and attire takes a black egg from its perch in a white vase and cracks it, spilling its innards on a shiny table the color of watermelon flesh. Then he takes an orange tube capping a fountain pen and uses it to snort the raw yolk, which drips from his nostril as he straightens himself and returns the tube to its place. Slow motion draws out the action, giving you time to guess where it’s headed, and the punch line could satisfy or confuse you. A simpler video, Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (2010), comprises short clips of the artists’

Droitcour, Brian. “Coming Up Roses: Alex Da Corte at MASS MoCA.” , May 5, 2016. Art in America hands touching objects. A flour-dusted hand stacks slices of white bread, then smooshes the tower down. It squirts blue shampoo into a wastebasket with green plastic weaving imitating wicker. Red- stained juicy hands snip slices of baloney along a diagonal. The video is set to the eponymous song by Leonard Cohen, a sad, soulful waltz with an ambling but insistent bass line that dances around the inevitability of diatonic chord progressions. Cohen’s ragged voice sometimes lands on the beat, sometimes just off it or after it, the way that the objects in the video meet expectations in some moments and defy them at others.

The appearance of pop songs in art often seems like a cop-out, as if artists exploit their emotional impact to compensate for a lack of the same in their own work. But Da Corte’s use of the Cohen song in Chelsea Hotel No. 2 is so precise. Elsewhere he uses more abstract electronic compositions, and he’s worked with composer and producer Dev Hynes to make soundtracks, including the solemn tones that envelop the far end of Lightning, which rearranges its namesake, Joseph Beuys’s Lightning with Stag in its Glare (1958-85), a permanent installation at MASS MoCA. There are bronze casts of fecal forms, and a tripod and a cart with lumpy heads approximate animals grazing around them. At the center is the lightning strike, petrified in a ziggurat of loam. The pieces of Beuys’s installation usually take up more space in the gallery, but Da Corte has tightened them into a circle of bare floor, surrounded by green shag carpet and bathed in green light. On the wall he’s hung a plastic sword piercing a monochrome painting—a gesture to European mythology to heighten the primal mystery of the Beuys.

Beuys makes a fascinating foil for Da Corte. Both use food in their work. Beuys used blocks of lard, real and cast, and the canned food and packaged sausages of postwar Germany’s meager diet, mixing them with totemic symbols to evoke a connection between the storage of caloric energy and its activation in the body, and the symbolic power of objects that animates the life of the soul. Da Corte uses potable liquids and real spices for their olfactory effects. But his sculptures usually incorporate more durable plastic food, the kind found at party supply stores: the stuff of sustenance already copied as decoration. Beuys found the magic of Tatar shamanism and medieval mysticism transmuted in modernity, and Da Corte picks up where Beuys left off; in contemporary America’s more motley world of consumption, he finds magic in encounters among things, tastes, and desires.

Droitcour, Brian. “Coming Up Roses: Alex Da Corte at MASS MoCA.” , May 5, 2016. Art in America Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” Modern Painters 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76.

Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” Modern Painters 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76.

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Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” Modern Painters 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76. Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” Modern Painters 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76.

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Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” Modern Painters 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76.

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS Alex Da Corte NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTSMass moca // March 26, 2016–January 31, 2017 Alex Da Corte THOUGH “FREE ROSES” Mass moca // March 26, 2016–January 31, 2017 posits itself as a hierarchical schema. Written out, it’s poetic, much like the short survey of the last decade of Da The oldest complete work in the show beautiful Leonard Cohen ballad that plays Corte’s short career, thinking about his is perhaps the most central to its in the background. It’s also sad, the THOUGH “FREE ROSES” posits itself aswork a chronologicallyhierarchical presents schema. challenges. understanding.Written Chelsea out, it’s Hotel #2 poetic,, 2010, much is like a thesoundtrack imbuing the surreal situations short survey of the last decade of DaFor one, the distinctionsThe oldest completeare blurry—he work in the showthree-minute-long beautiful video Leonard wherein Cohen familiar ballad that withplays a sense of loss. Corte’s short career, thinking about constantlyhis isremixes perhaps objects the most and central ideas, to its objects are inrendered the background. unfamiliar It’s through also sad, the A series of three videos from 2012 picks work chronologically presents challenges.often incorporating understanding. older worksChelsea into Hotel #2 newer, 2010,close is a focus soundtrack and strange imbuing actions theperformed surreal situationsup where Chelsea Hotel #2 left off, exploring For one, the distinctions are blurry—heinstallations, three-minute-long and so on. Indeed, video such wherein familiarby anonymous with sets a sense of soiled of loss. hands: a lily is violence and the sensuality of food, but constantly remixes objects and ideas,distinctions objects are almost are rendered irrelevant, unfamiliar his throughrolled in bubbleA wrap,series aof stack three of videos white from bread 2012 doing picks so to more disturbing ends. A Season often incorporating older works into newer close focus and strange actions performed up where Chelsea Hotel #2 left off, exploring Alex Da Corte democratic approach toward all objects is depressed by an open palm. Nail polish– in He’ll, Bad Blood, and The Impossible are Installation view of installations, and so on. Indeed,UXEMBOURG NEW & DAYAN, YORK such by anonymous sets of soiled hands: a lily is violence and the sensuality of food, but JOHN BERNARDO, ALEX CORTE, DA AND L ultimately resisting any kind of painted cherries, bologna cut by scissors: all named after sections in Arthur Lightning, 2016. distinctions are almost irrelevant, his rolled in bubble wrap, a stack of white bread doing so to more disturbing ends. A Season NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS Alex Da Corte democratic approach toward all objects is depressed by an open palm. Nail polish– in He’ll, Bad Blood, and The Impossible are Installation view of

UXEMBOURG NEW & DAYAN, YORK Alex Da Corte JOHN BERNARDO, ALEX CORTE, DA AND L ultimately resisting any kind of painted cherries, bologna cut by scissors: all named after sections in Arthur LightningBLOUINARTINFO.COM, 2016. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 75 NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTSMass moca // March 26, 2016–January 31, 2017 NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS THOUGH “FREE ROSES” posits itself as a hierarchical schema. Written out, it’s poetic, much like the Alex Da Corte short survey of the last decade of Da The oldest complete work in the show beautiful Leonard Cohen ballad that plays BLOUINARTINFO.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 75 Mass moca // March 26, 2016–JanuaryAlex Da 31, 2017 Corte Corte’s short career, thinking about his is perhaps the most central to its in the background. It’s also sad, the Mass moca // March 26,work 2016–January chronologically 31, presents 2017 challenges. understanding. 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Written out, it’s poetic, much like the constantly remixes objectsFor one, and the ideas, distinctions objectsare blurry—he are rendered unfamiliarthree-minute-long through video whereinA series familiar of three videosBLOUINARTINFO.COMwith from a OCTOBER/NOVEMBERsense 2012 picksof loss. 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 75 short survey of the last decade of Da The oldest complete work in the show beautiful Leonard Cohen ballad that plays often incorporating olderconstantlyCorte’s works short intoremixes career, newer thinking objects close about and focus his ideas, and is strange perhapsobjects actionsthe most are performedcentral rendered to its unfamiliarup where inthrough Chelseathe background. 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Alex Da Corte democratic approach toward all objects is depressed by an open palm. Nail polish– in He’ll, Bad Blood, and The Impossible are Installation view of UXEMBOURG NEW & DAYAN, YORK

JOHN BERNARDO, ALEX CORTE, DA AND L ultimately resisting any kind of painted cherries, bologna cut by scissors: all namedBLOUINARTINFO.COM after sections in Arthur OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016Lightning MODERN, 2016. PAINTERS 75

BLOUINARTINFO.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 75 Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76. Modern Painters BLOUINARTINFO.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 75 REVIEWS REVIEWS Rimbaud’s 1873 prose poem “A Season in Hell.” It is REVIEWS Rimbaud’s opus, a hallucinatory reflection on the author’s Rimbaud’s 1873 prose poem “A Season in Hell.” It is struggles with love, drugs, and homosexuality. In Da Corte’s Rimbaud’s opus, a hallucinatory reflection on the author’s trilogy, the drama is all self-induced: a man, who appears Rimbaud’s 1873 prose poem “A Season in Hell.” It is struggles with love, drugs, and homosexuality. In Da Corte’s in all three videos, injects soda, snorts an egg, and punches REVIEWS Rimbaud’s opus, a hallucinatory reflection on the author’s trilogy, the drama is all self-induced: a man, who appears himself in the face with brass knuckles. struggles with love, drugs, and homosexuality. In Da Corte’s in all three videos, injects soda, snorts an egg, and punches Outside the video rooms, collections of Da Corte’s previous trilogy,trilogy, thethe dramadrama isis allall self-induced:self-induced: aa man,man, whowho appearsappears himself in the face with brass knuckles. works are compiled into ad hoc installations and re-creations inin allall threethree videos,videos, injectsinjects soda,soda, snortssnorts anan egg,egg, andand punchespunches REVIEWS Outside the video rooms, collections of Da Corte’s previous of previous exhibitions. Carpets crawl up the walls on which himself in the face with brass knuckles.Rimbaud’s 1873 prose poem “A Season in Hell.” It is Outside the videoworks rooms, are compiled collections into of ad Da hoc Corte’s installations previous and re-creations his paintings appropriating album covers lean in stacks, as if REVIEWS of previous exhibitions. Carpets crawl up the walls on which works are compiled into ad hoc installationsRimbaud’s and re-creations opus, a hallucinatory reflection on the author’s in a record store bin. Nearby there’s Easternsports, 2014, a Rimbaud’s 1873 prose poemhis “A paintings Season in appropriatingHell.” It is album covers lean in stacks, as if Rimbaud’sof previous opus, a hallucinatoryexhibitions. reflection Carpets on crawl the author’s up the walls on which four channel video collaboration which mixes elaborate in a record store bin. Nearbystruggles there’s Easternsportswith love,, 2014, drugs, a and homosexuality. In Da Corte’s scenery by Da Corte, a faux-poetic text by Jayson Musson struggleshisRimbaud’s paintingswith love, 1873 drugs, appropriating prose and poem homosexuality. “A Season album in In coversHell.” Da Corte’s It is lean in stacks, as if Rimbaud’s opus, a fourhallucinatory channel reflection video collaboration on the author’s which mixes elaborate trilogy,inin the aa recordrecord drama is storestore all self-induced: bin.bin. NearbyNearby a man, there’sthere’s who appears Easternsportstrilogy, the,, 2014,2014, drama aa is all self-induced: a man, who appears (a.k.a. Hennessy Youngman), and a dreamy soundtrack by in all threestruggles videos, with injects love, scenerysoda, drugs, snorts and by homosexuality. anDa egg, Corte, and punchesa Infaux-poetic Da Corte’s text by Jayson Musson fourfour channelchannel videovideo collaborationcollaboration whichwhich mixesmixes elaborateelaborate Dev Hynes. The video is impressive, but at nearly three hours himself trilogy,in the facethe drama with brass is(a.k.a. all self-induced:knuckles. Hennessy a man, Youngman), whoin appears all and three a dreamy videos, soundtrack injects by soda, snorts an egg, and punches sceneryin all three by videos, Da Corte, injects a soda,faux-poetic snorts an egg,text and by punches Jayson Musson long is a lot to take in. Its discordant parts result more in an Outside the video rooms,Dev collections Hynes. Theof Da video Corte’s is previous impressive, but at nearly three hours works(a.k.a.(a.k.a. arehimself compiled HennessyHennessy in the into face ad Youngman),withYoungman), hoc brass installations knuckles. andand and aa dreamydreamyre-creationshimself soundtracksoundtrack in the byby face with brass knuckles. indulgent formal experiment and self-conscious joke than a Outside the videolong rooms, is a collections lot to take of Dain. 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The Each first “scene” eight are it does Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy—two of the artists to is vaguelythethedelineated househouse domestic, fromfromby fromcolor Beetlejuice cinematic, aand loose loose mash-up thematic ,,invoking toto aaof reference referencetheimagery. livingDavidindulgent Each rooms totoLynch “scene”thethe dogdogand whoTimwhoformal Burton experiment as much as and self-conscious joke than a Alex Da Corte whom Da Corte is most often compared. from Thewitnessedis Simpsonsvaguely domestic,Nicole and Singin’it Brown fromdoes in a thelooseMike Simpson’s Rain mash-up Kelley, to the andofmurder. façade thecohesive Paul living of It’sMcCarthy—two rooms theatric, statement. even of the artists to FROM TOP: Finally, Lightning concludes in the room adjacent to the Alex Da Corte the housecinematic,from from The Beetlejuice Simpsons invokingwhom and, to David aSingin’ reference Da LynchCortein the to Raintheis and most dog, to Tim the who often façadeBurton compared. of as much as Still from witnessedthe Nicolehouse fromBrown Beetlejuice Simpson’s, to murder. a reference It’s theatric,to the dog even who main one, where Beuys’s Lightning with Stag in its Glare is FROM TOP: itit doesdoes MikeMike KelleyKelley andFinally,and PaulPaul Lightning McCarthy—twoMcCarthy—two concludes But ofof inthethe it’sthe artistsartists room the toto adjacent newest to the work in the show that is the most Easternsports, 2014. cinematic,witnessed invoking Nicole David Brown Lynch Simpson’s and Tim Burtonmurder. as It’s much theatric, as even Still from main one, where Beuys’s Lightning with Stag in its Glare is Three-channel permanently installed. Da Corte, who frequently includes Alex Da Corte Easternsports, 2014. it doeswhom Mikecinematic, KelleyDa Corteinvoking and Paul is David most McCarthy—two Lynch often and compared. Tim of theBurton artists as much to as digital video. permanently installed.striking. Da Corte, who Lightning frequently includes, 2015–16, is a sprawling, site-specific other artists’ work in his exhibitions, brilliantly incorporates FROMFROM TOP:TOP:Alex Da CorteThree-channel whom Dait Finally,does Corte Mike is LightningmostLightning Kelley often and compared. Paul concludesconcludes McCarthy—two inin thethe of roomroom the artists adjacentadjacent to toto thethe StillStill fromfrom digital video. whom Da Corte is most often compared. Still from Chelsea the Beuys sculpture. 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Its title is a reference both neon lights it, surrounding but not touching it, and digital video. Easternsports, 2014. estate would not allow it. So instead, Da Corte installed green around digitalDigital video.Three-channel video, 3 min. otherother artists’permanently artists’ work in installed. hiswork exhibitions, in Da his Corte, exhibitions, brilliantly who frequently incorporates brilliantly includes incorporates Installation view of digital video. neon lights around it, surrounding but not touching it, and turned off all other sources of light, subsuming the museum’s StillStill fromfrom Chelsea thetheother BeuysBeuys artists’ sculpture.sculpture. work in his He Heexhibitions, wantedwanted brilliantly toto addaddto incorporatesontoonto another it,it, butbut thethe sectionBeuysBeuys of Rimbaud’s poem and to one of Cold War, 2011. Still fromInstallation Chelsea view of the Beuys sculpture. He wanted to add onto it, but the Beuys Hotel No. 2,, 2010.2010.Hotel No. 2, Still2010. from Chelsea the Beuys sculpture.turned He wanted off all to addother onto sources it, but the of Beuys light, subsuming the museum’s most iconic artwork in a punkish Cold War, 2011. estateestate would wouldnot allow not it. Soallow instead, it. SoDa Corteinstead, installed Da Corte green installed green Digital video, 3 min.Digital video, 3 min.Hotel No. 2, 2010. estate would not allow it. So instead, Da Corte Massinstalled green moca ’s most famous pieces, Joseph Beuys’s Lightning fashion that would have made Beuys Digital video, 3 min. neon neonlights aroundlights it,around surrounding it,it, surroundingsurrounding but not touching butbut it, notnot mostand touchingtouching iconic artworkit,it, andand in a punkish Installation view of neon lights aroundaround it, surrounding but not touching it, and Installation view of turned off all other sources of light, subsuming the museum’sfashion that would have made Beuys himself proud. Installation view ofCold WarInstallation, 2011. view of turnedturnedturned offoffoff allallall other otherother sources sourcessources of light, ofof subsuminglight,light, subsumingsubsumingwith the museum’s Stag thethe museum’smuseum’s in its Glare, 1958–85. Like “A Season in Hell,” the Cold War,, 2011.2011. Cold War, 2011. most iconic artwork in a punkish most iconic artwork in a himselfpunkish proud. Da Corte’s sculptural language is fashion thatmost would iconic have made artwork Beuys in a punkish fashion that would havepiece madeDa Beuys Corte’sis modular, sculptural languagedivided is into sections. The first eight are built from everyday commercial himself proud.fashionfashion thatthat wouldwould havehave mademade BeuysBeuys himself proud. Da Corte’s sculptural languagebuilt is from everyday commercial items that once promised a better life, Dahimself Corte’s sculpturalproud.delineated language is by color and loose thematic imagery. Each “scene” built from everyday commercialitems that once promised a better life, but instead amount only to cheap built fromDa everyday Corte’s commercial sculptural language is items that once promised a betterisbut vaguely life,instead amount domestic, only to cheap from a loose mash-up of the living rooms and shiny stuff: tangled Apple head- itemsbuilt that fromonce promised everyday a better commercial life, but insteadbut instead amount amount only to only cheap andto cheap shiny stuff: tangled Apple head- phones, American Apparel tights, itemsitems thatthat onceoncefrom promisedpromised The aa betterbetterSimpsons life,life, and Singin’ in the Rain, to the façade of and shinyand stuff:shiny tangled stuff: tangled Apple Apple phones,head- head- American Apparel tights, unwrapped Ikea shelves. They’re sad, phones, Americanbut instead Apparel amount tights, only to cheap phones, American Appareltheunwrapped tights, house Ikea from shelves. Beetlejuice They’re sad, , to a reference to the dog who in a way, the speed of consumerism unwrappedunwrappedand Ikea shiny shelves. Ikea shelves.stuff: They’re tangled They’re sad, sad, Apple head- in a way, the speed of consumerismin a way, the speed of consumerism having left them obsolete or forgotten. in a way,phones, the speed American of consumerismwitnessed Apparel tights, Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder. It’s theatric, even having left themphones, obsolete American or forgotten.having Apparel left them tights, obsolete or forgotten. One could imagine an entire ware- having left them obsolete or forgotten. One couldOne imagine unwrappedcould imagine an entire anIkea entireware-cinematic,One shelves. ware- could They’re imagine invoking sad, an entire ware- David Lynch and Tim Burton as much as house of these old objects, things used house ofhouse theseinin of aa old these way,way, objects, old thethe objects, thingsspeedspeedhouse things used ofof consumerismconsumerism ofused these old objects, things used once or twice and then thrown once oronce twice or andtwice then and thrown thenit thrown does Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy—two of the artists to having left them onceobsolete or twice or forgotten. and then thrown away—not a bad image alongside away—notaway—not a bad imagea bad image alongside alongside One could imaginewhomaway—not an entire Da a ware- badCorte image is alongside most often compared. “Free Roses,” especially since the Alex Da Corte “Free Roses,”“Free Roses,” especially especially since sincethe the show isshow installedhouse is installed in of an these industrialin an oldindustrial“Free objects, Roses,” things especially used since the show is installed in an industrial FROM TOP: Finally, concludes in the room adjacent to the buildingbuilding hauntedonce haunted orby twicethe by ghosts the and showghosts of then ofis throwninstalled Lightning in an industrial building haunted by the ghosts of Still from mass-manufacturing past. mass-manufacturingaway—not past. a badmainbuilding image one, alongsidehaunted where by the Beuys’sghosts of Lightning with Stag in its Glare is Easternsports, 2014. In Da Corte’sIn Da Corte’s world, world,cheap cheap objects objects mass-manufacturing past. “Free Roses,” especiallymass-manufacturing since the past. In Da Corte’s world, cheap objects Three-channel have thehave same the valuesame asvalue canonical aspermanently canonical installed. Da Corte, who frequently includes works ofworks art.show Andof art. despiteis And installed despite all its allin In itsan Da industrial Corte’s world, cheap objects have the same value as canonical digital video. playfulness,playfulness,building Benetton Benetton hauntedcolors, colors,other andhave by and thethe artists’ ghostssame value of work as canonical in his exhibitions, brilliantly incorporates works of art. And despite all its cartooncartoon references,mass-manufacturing references, it’s ultimately it’s ultimatelyworks a past. of a art. And despite all its pretty gloomy place to be. playfulness, Benetton colors, and Still from Chelsea pretty gloomy InplaceIn DaDa to Corte’sCorte’s be. theplayfulness, world,world, Beuys cheapcheap Benetton sculpture.objectsobjects colors, and He wanted to add onto it, but the Beuys —Taylor Dafoe FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO —Taylor Dafoe FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO cartoon references, it’s ultimately a Hotel No. 2, 2010. have the sameestate valuecartoon as canonicalreferences,would not it’s ultimately allow it.a So instead, Da Corte installed green pretty gloomy place to be. Digital video, 3 min. works of art. Andpretty despite gloomy all its place to be.

—Taylor Dafoe FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO 76 MODERN PAINTERS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM neon lights around it, surrounding but not touching it, and 76 MODERN PAINTERS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM playfulness, Benetton colors, and —Taylor Dafoe FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO Installation view of cartoon references,turned it’s ultimately off all othera sources of light, subsuming the museum’s Cold War, 2011. pretty gloomy place to be. 76 MODERN PAINTERS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM most iconic artwork in a punkish FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO 76 MODERN PAINTERS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM —Taylor Dafoe FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO fashion that would have made Beuys Dafoe, Taylor. “Alex Da Corte.” 28, no. 9, October/November 2016, pp. 75–76. himself proud. 76 MODERNMODERN PAINTERSPAINTERS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COMBLOUINARTINFO.COM Modern Painters Da Corte’s sculptural language is built from everyday commercial items that once promised a better life, but instead amount only to cheap and shiny stuff: tangled Apple head- phones, American Apparel tights, unwrapped Ikea shelves. They’re sad, in a way, the speed of consumerism having left them obsolete or forgotten. One could imagine an entire warehouse of these old objects, things used once or twice and then thrown away—not a bad image alongside “Free Roses,” especially since the show is installed in an industrial building haunted by the ghosts of mass-manufacturing past. In Da Corte’s world, cheap objects have the same value as canonical works of art. And despite all its playfulness, Benetton colors, and cartoon references, it’s ultimately a pretty gloomy place to be.

—Taylor Dafoe FROM TOP: ALEX CORTE, DA JAYSON MUSSON, FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY, AND SALON ALEX 94; CORTE; DA JOHN BERNARDO

76 MODERN PAINTERS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM INTRODUCING//ALEX DA CORTE

MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24Inorganicth Street, New York,New MatterYork 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047 Layering space to explore fam ily history BY THEA BALLARD INTRODUCING//ALEX DA CORTE

INTRODUCING//ALEX DA CORTE INTRODUCING“THE FIRST THING//ALEX I DA started CORTE working It’s a really nice monument, it’s strong, style arrangement of objects into an ad with was plastic fingernails.” and it signifies something like armor.” hoc mood board along one wall indicates Alex Da Corte is describing the early A decade or so later, the artist’s that Da Corte’s elevated view of such INTRODUCINGtrajectory //ALEXof his DA career, CORTE after studying northwest Philadelphia studio—a inorganic cultural scraps is very much Installation animation as an undergraduate. “I windowless, unheated room with high still present: There’s a bright-yellow upside view of had always loved objects and wanted to ceilings in a now-empty factory, accessible down plastic bag bearing the image Easternsports,Inorganic Matter a 2014 work with them, but I didn’t understand Layering space to explore fam ily historyvia a garage door—remains populated of the very tan pro wrestler Hulk Hogan collaborationInorganicInorganic metal or wood or anyMatter of Matterthat stuff,” he by numerous plastic accoutrements, alongside a trio of Swiffer mops, a nose with JaysonBYLayering THEA BALLARD space to explore fam ily history Musson at Layeringrecalls. space “That kind to exploreof craft is fambeyond ily me,history fragments of a practice that incorporates mounted on a reflective gold disk, a the InstituteBY THEA of BALLARDand it felt like it was about being a video, painting, and sculpture, often hanging wig, and several smallish collage BY THEA BALLARD ContemporaryInorganic heroic white male. Matter A plastic fingernail is mixed together in an intensely colorful style paintings, including a Ouija board Art in Layering space to explore fam ily history Philadelphia.“THE FIRSTa THINGlot like I Richardstarted working Serra’s TiltedIt’s Arc: a really niceimmersive monument, installation it’s strong, format. style A salon-arrangement decoratedof objects into with an images ad of Miley Cyrus. BY“THE THEA FIRST BALLARD THING I started working It’s a really nice monument, it’s strong, style arrangement of objects into an ad with was“THE plastic FIRST fingernails.” THING I started working andIt’s ita signifiesreally nice something monument, like it’s strong,armor.” hoc mood board along one wall indicates with was plastic fingernails.” and it signifies something like armor.” hoc moodstyle board arrangement along one of wall objects indicates into an ad Alexwith Da wasCorte plastic is describing fingernails.” the early andA decadeit signifies or sosomething later, the like artist’s armor.” hoc moodthat Daboard Corte’s along elevatedone wall indicates view of such Alex Da Corte is describing the early A decade or so later, the artist’s that Da Corte’s elevated view of such trajectoryAlex of his Da career,Corte is afterdescribing studying the early northwestA decade Philadelphia or so later, the studio—a artist’s thatinorganic Da Corte’s culturalelevated viewscraps of issuch very much trajectory of his career, after studying northwest Philadelphia studio—a inorganic cultural scraps is very much Installation “THE FIRSTtrajectory THING of his I started career, working after studying It’s a really nice monument, it’s strong, style arrangement of objects into an ad Installation animation as an undergraduate. “I windowless,northwest Philadelphia unheated room studio—a with high inorganicstill present: cultural scrapsThere’s is avery bright-yellow much upside view of animation as an undergraduate. “I windowless, unheated room with high still present: There’s a bright-yellow upside view of Installationhadwith always wasanimation plastic loved fingernails.”as objects an undergraduate. and wanted “I to and itceilings signifieswindowless, in something a now-emptyunheated like room armor.” factory, with high accessible hoc mood still board present: along There’s one wall a bright-yellow indicates upside Easternsports, had always loved objects and wanted to ceilings in a now-empty factory, accessible down plasticdown bag bearingplastic bagthe imagebearing the image Easternsports,view of Alexhad Da alwaysCorte is loved describing objects the and early wanted to A decadeceilings or inso alater, now-empty the artist’s factory, accessiblethat Dadown Corte’s plastic elevated bag bearingview of suchthe image a 2014a 2014 Easternsports,workwork with with them, butbut I Ididn’t didn’t understand understand via avia garage a garage door—remains door—remains populated populated of the veryof tan the pro very wrestler tan proHulk wrestler Hogan Hulk Hogan a 2014 trajectorywork of withhis career, them, but after I didn’tstudying understand northwest via aPhiladelphia garage door—remains studio—a populated inorganic cultural scraps is very much collaborationcollaboration metalmetal oror wood oror any any of of that that stuff,” stuff,” he he by numerousby numerous plastic plastic accoutrements, accoutrements, alongsideof the aalongside trio very of tan Swiffer proa trio wrestler mops, of Swiffer a Hulknose Hoganmops, a nose withInstallationwith Jayson Jaysoncollaboration animation metal as oran wood undergraduate. or any of that “I stuff,” he windowless,by numerous unheated plastic room accoutrements,with high still present:alongside There’s a trio a bright-yellow of Swiffer mops, upside a nose viewMusson of withat Jaysonrecalls.recalls. “That“That kindkind of of craft craft is isbeyond beyond me, me, fragmentsfragments of a practice of a practice that incorporates that incorporates mounted on a reflective gold disk, a Musson at had alwaysrecalls. loved “That objects kind and of craftwanted is beyond to me,ceilings fragments in a now-empty of a practice factory, that accessible incorporates down plasticmountedmounted bag on bearing a reflectiveon athe reflective image gold disk, gold a disk, a theEasternsports, theInstitute InstituteMusson of of at and it felt like it was about being a video, painting, and sculpture, often hanging wig, and several smallish collage aContemporary 2014 the Institute andwork of it with feltand them,likeit felt it butlike was I itdidn’t aboutwas understandabout being being a a via a video,garagevideo, painting, door—remainspainting, andand sculpture,populatedsculpture, often often of the very hangingtan pro wrestler wig, and Hulk several Hogan smallish collage Contemporary heroic white male. A plastic fingernail is mixed together in an intensely colorful style paintings,hanging wig,including and several a Ouija smallish board collage collaborationArt in Contemporary heroicmetal orwhiteheroic wood whitemale. or any male. A of plastic that A plastic stuff,” fingernail fingernailhe is byis numerousmixedmixed together plastictogether accoutrements, in anan intensely intensely colorful colorfulalongside style a style triopaintings, of paintings, Swiffer including mops, including aa Ouijanose aboard Ouija board Art withinPhiladelphia. JaysonArt in a lot like Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc: immersive installation format. A salon- decorated with images of Miley Cyrus. Philadelphia.Musson atPhiladelphia. arecalls. lot likea “That lot Richard like kind Richard ofSerra’s craft Serra’s is Tiltedbeyond Tilted Arc: me, Arc: fragmentsimmersiveimmersive of a practice installationinstallation that incorporates format. format. A salon-A salon-mounteddecorated ondecorated a reflective with imageswith gold imagesdisk, of Miley a of Cyrus. Miley Cyrus. the Institute of and it felt like it was about being a video, painting, and sculpture, often hanging wig, and several smallish collage Contemporary Art in heroic white male. A plastic fingernail is mixed together in an intensely colorful style paintings, including a Ouija board Philadelphia. a lot like Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc: immersive installation format. A salon- decorated with images of Miley Cyrus.

36 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

36 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COMBallard, Thea. “Inorganic Matter: Layering Space to Explore Family History.” 27, no. 2, 36 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM FebruaryModern 2015, Painters pp. 36–38.

36 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

36 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM Ballard, Thea. “Inorganic Matter: Layering Space to Explore Family History.” 27, no. 2, FebruaryModern 2015, Painters pp. 36–38. INTRODUCING//ALEX DACORTE

stand objects in contemporary culture. Da Corte’s evident affection for advertising or a supermarket palette might suggest to the viewer that he or she should rapidly consume the work, but he emphasizes a perhaps counterintuitive intimacy in its pacing. “It’s slow, and antitechnology in some ways,” he says. “It’s slower than what people assume it might be. It does have a feeling of supermarket fast flash to it, but it’s very much about the psyche.” For context, he offers some family history, uncovered while working with his grandmother for this project. “My American grand father was a grocery store stockist for McCormick spices,” he says. “For some reason, it just never occurred to me, but my abuelo on my father’s side started a conglomerate supermarket when he moved from Portugal to Caracas. It’s a strange parallel, with my grandfathers on opposite ends of this food chain, occupying two very different roles of power. That collision of class is very much embedded in all of my work.” And, as he points out, this emerged through a process of revisiting INTRODUCING//ALEX DACORTE the systems that make up his personal and familial history. “It comes from seeing if the set of systems that you grew up with is a given, or a puzzle—how you can stand objects in contemporary culture. be constantly reanalyzing it,” he explains. Da Corte’s evident affection for And while Da Corte’s work reflects advertising or a supermarket palette social realities, critiquing class rituals might suggest to the viewer that he or she should rapidly consume the work, but and containing a narrative of the artist’s he emphasizes a perhaps counterintuitive own history, it also uses these same intimacy in its pacing. “It’s slow, and materials to reach toward another space. antitechnology in some ways,” he says. “I’m drawing from the hyper-flat space “It’s slower than what people assume it might be. It does have a feeling of the first time.” As an artist with a marked that’s lacking in the urbane detachment of animation, from the days when ink and supermarket fast flash to it, but it’s very interest in plastic, as seen in the Hulk of, say, K-Hole or DIS magazine. His video paint were reverse-painted to a cel, and much about the psyche.” For context, Hogan bag, or an in-progress arrangement True Life, 2013, in which he stares at the what it means to live on the other side he offers some family history, uncovered incorporating a plastic vessel filled with viewer while eating a bowl of cinnamon of that plastic sheet; it seems like plastic while working with his grandmother for this project. “My American grand Christmas ornaments and a particularly Life cereal in character as Eminem (color is the best way to speak that language,” father was a grocery store stockist for inscrutable green piece of Ball jar contacts and all), has a comic veneer, he says. “Plastic is the interstitial space McCormick spices,” he says. “For some packaging, Da Corte is frequently subject and plays with racial signifiers as a between the real and the glossy, some reason, it just never occurred to me, but my abuelo on my father’s side started a to the complication of socially loaded form of adornment; it’s also, however, an parallel kind of world.” mp associations, be they with low cultural empathetic performance—stepping into conglomerate supermarket when he moved ABOVE: from Portugal to Caracas. It’s a strange The Moon signifiers or Pop art. “I went recently the embattled rapper’s costume to see parallel, with my grandfathers on opposite Gone Dark (with to a couple of shows in Europe,” he recalls, how it feels. The 2014 Easternsports, too, ends of this food chain, occupying two Eugene Von very different roles of power. That collision Bruenchenhein). “and their idea of America or the suburbs has a stylized veneer: It consists of four of class is very much embedded in all 2014. Anodized just made me giggle, because I think channels replete with good-looking actors metal frame, ribbon, of my work.” And, as he points out, this they saw my work as really low. I don’t and humorous references (beer pong, //ALEX DACORTE digitally printed INTRODUCINGINTRODUCING//ALEX DACORTE emerged through a process of revisiting nylon, sequin pins, think of it that way because I grew up in a spray-tanned woman doing yoga, and the systems that make up his personal spray paint, images that environment—plastic is really familiar a chain-smoking witch among them), INTRODUCING//ALEX DACORTE and familial history. “It comes from seeing from Eugene Von if the set of systems that you grew up to me, and comforting. If everything not to mention the setting in which it’s //ALEX DACORTE Bruenchenhein's INTRODUCING with is a given, or a puzzle—how you can 1998 Works in uptown is glass, then everything in my viewed, lit in fuchsia neon. But filmed stand objects inbe contemporaryconstantly reanalyzing culture. it,” he explains. Clay catalogue, stand objects in contemporary culture. foam, and house is plastic. But it’s shiny, it’s colorful, at half speed and narrated by subtitles Da Corte’s evidentAnd Dawhile affection Corte’s Da Corte’s forevident work affection reflects for tape, 56x64 in. it doesn’t break—all of these things, to me, relating an epic, and often hilarious, poetic standadvertising objects or insocial a contemporarysupermarketadvertising realities, critiquing orpalette culture. a supermarket class rituals palette standmight objects suggest in contemporary to the viewer culture. that he or she make it seem really royal and luxe.” treatise written by Jayson Musson, the DaDa Corte’s Corte’s evident andevident affection containingmight affection suggestfor a narrative for to the viewer of the that artist’s he or she RIGHT: advertisingshouldadvertising rapidly or a or supermarket ownconsumea supermarket shouldhistory, thepalette rapidly it work, also palette consumeuses but these the same work, but Da Corte as Eminem Da Corte possesses some aesthetic and piece—projected as a four-hour loop— mighthemight emphasizes suggest suggest to the materials toa viewer perhapsthehe vieweremphasizes that to counterintuitivehe reach thator she towardhe a perhaps or she another counterintuitive space. in a promotional social overlap with other young artists is designed to be experienced in no partic should rapidly consume“I’m thedrawing work, but from the hyper-flat space image for the shouldintimacy rapidly in its consumepacing.intimacy “It’s the slow,inwork, its andpacing. but “It’s slow, and the first time.” As an artist with a marked that’s lacking in the urbane detachmenthe emphasizes a perhapsof animation, counterintuitive from the days when ink and September 2013 plumbing the imagery of contemporary ular order and revisited, coaxing the more heantitechnology emphasizes ain perhaps someantitechnology ways,” counterintuitive he insays. some ways,” he says. interest in plastic, as seen in the Hulk of, say, K-Hole or DIS magazine.intimacy His video in its pacing.paint “It’s were slow, reverse-painted and to a cel, and exhibition consumer culture, but the sincerity of attentive visitor into a somewhat alien antitechnologyintimacy“It’s slower in thaninits some pacing. what ways,”“It’s people“It’sslower he says. slow, assumethan and what people assume Hogan bag, or an in-progress arrangement True Life, 2013, in which he stares at the what it means to live on the other side "lOOOISLAND" “It’sitantitechnology might slower be.than It what does in peoplesomeit have might assumeways,” a feelingbe. Ithe does says.of have a feeling of atJoeSheftel in his relationship to these materials lends viewing rhythm, one that works in tension incorporating a plastic vessel filled with viewer while eating a bowl of cinnamon of that plastic sheet; it seems like plastic it“It’ssupermarket might slower be. It doesthan fast have what flashsupermarket a feeling people to it, of but assume fast it’s flashvery to it, but it’s very New York. weight to his middle-class references with the rhythms by which we under BOTH IMAGES: ALEX DACORTE Christmas ornaments and a particularly Life cereal in character as Eminemsupermarket (color fast flashis the tomuch bestit, but aboutway it’s very to the speak psyche.” that language,”For context, muchitmuch might about about be. the Itthepsyche.” does psyche.” Forhave context, Fora feeling context, of inscrutable green piece of Ball jar contacts and all), has a comic veneer,he offers some hefamily says.he offershistory, “Plastic some uncovered is familythe interstitial history, uncovered space packaging, Da Corte is frequently subject and plays with racial signifiershesupermarket asoffers a some family fastbetween history, flash the touncovered it,real but and it’s the very glossy, some whilewhile working working with with his grandmotherwhile his grandmother working with his grandmother to the complication of socially loaded form of adornment; it’s also, however,much aboutan theparallel psyche.” kind For of context, world.” mp forfor this this project. project. “My American“Myfor Americanthis grand project. grand “My American grand associations, be they with low cultural empathetic performance—steppinghe offers into some family history, uncovered ABOVE: father was a grocery storefather stockist was for a grocery store stockist for MODERN PAINTERS BLOUINARTINFO.COM whilefather workingwas a grocery with his store grandmother stockist for 38 FEBRUARY 2015 The Moon signifiers or Pop art. “I went recently the embattled rapper’s costumeMcCormick to see spices,” he says.McCormick “For some spices,” he says. “For some Gone Dark (with reason,forMcCormick this it just project. never spices,” occurred“My he American says.to me, “Forbut grand some to a couple of shows in Europe,” he recalls, how it feels. 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The Lifea bowl2014 cereal Easternsports, of cinnamon in character too, as ofEminem that plastic (color sheet;is theit seems best way like to plastic speak that language,” interestEugene Von in plastic, as seen in the Hulk of, say, K-Hole or DIS magazine. His video paint were reverse-painted to a cel, and HoganChristmasBruenchenhein). bag, ornamentsor an “andin-progressinscrutable their and idea a particularly arrangementof America green orpiece the suburbs ofLifeTrue Ball cereal Life, jarhas 2013, ina stylized character in which contactsveneer: as he ItEminem consistsstaresand all), of at(color four hasthe a comicwhatis the veneer, itbest means way toto livespeakhe onsays. thatthe “Plastic other language,” side is the interstitial space 2014. Anodized just madepackaging, me giggle, Da because Corte Iis think frequently channelssubject replete with good-looking actors incorporatinginscrutablemetal frame, ribbon, green a plastic piece vessel of Ball filled jar with viewercontacts while and eatingall), has anda bowla playscomic of cinnamonwith veneer, racial signifiersofhe thatsays. as plastic a“Plastic sheet; isbetween the it interstitialseems the likereal plasticandspace the glossy, some digitally printed they saw my work as really low. I don’t and humorous references (beer pong, packaging, Da Corte tois frequentlythe complication subject of sociallyand loadedplays with racialform signifiers of adornment; as a it’s also,between however, the an real andparallel the glossy, kind of some world.” mp Christmasnylon, sequin pins,ornaments think ofand it that a particularly way because I grew upLife in cereala spray-tanned in character woman as Eminemdoing yoga, (color and is the best way to speak that language,” tospray the paint,complication images that of associations,environment—plastic socially loaded be they is really with familiarform low ofcultural adornment;a chain-smoking it’sempathetic witch also, among however, performance—stepping them), an parallel kindinto of world.” mp inscrutablefromABOVE: Eugene Von green piece of Ball jar contacts and all), has a comic veneer, he says. “Plastic is the interstitial space associations,Bruenchenhein'sThe Moon be theyto me,signifiers with and comforting.low orcultural Pop If art. everything “I wentempathetic recentlynot performance—steppingto mentionthe the embattledsetting in which rapper’s into it’s costume to see ABOVE: packaging, Da Corte is frequently subject and plays with racial signifiers as a between the real and the glossy, some 1998Gone Works Dark in (with uptown is glass, then everything in my viewed, lit in fuchsia neon. But filmed The Moon signifiers or Pop art. to“I awent couple recently of shows in Europe,”the embattled he recalls, rapper’s how costume it feels. toThe see 2014 Easternsports, too, to ClayEugenethe catalogue, complication Von house of socially is plastic. loadedBut it’s shiny, it’s colorful,form of adornment;at half speed andit’s narratedalso, however, by subtitles an parallel kind of world.” mp Gone Dark (with tofoam, Bruenchenhein).a couple and of shows in“and Europe,” their idea he recalls, of America how or the it feels. suburbs The 2014has Easternsports, a stylized veneer: too, It consists of four Eugene Von associations,tape, 56x64 in. be theyit doesn’t with break—all low cultural of these things,empathetic to me, relating performance—stepping an epic, and often hilarious, into poetic ABOVE: “and2014. their Anodized idea of Americajust made or the me suburbs giggle, becausehas Ia thinkstylized veneer:channels It consists replete of four with good-looking actors Bruenchenhein). signifiersRIGHT: or Pop art.make “I it wentseem reallyrecently royal and luxe.”the embattledtreatise rapper’s written by costume Jayson Musson, to see the The Moon metal frame, ribbon, they saw my work as really low. I don’t and humorous references (beer pong, 2014.Gone Anodized Dark (with justtoDa digitallya Cortecouplemade as printed Eminemme of showsgiggle, Dain because CorteEurope,” possesses I think he recalls, some aesthetic howchannels and it feels.piece—projected replete The 2014with asEasternsports,good-looking a four-hour loop— actors too, metalEugene frame, Von ribbon, innylon, a promotional sequin pins, socialthink overlap of with it that other way young because artists I grewis up designed in to bea spray-tanned experienced in nowoman partic doing yoga, and digitally printed “andtheyimage sawtheir for the my idea work of America as really or low. the I suburbsdon’t hasand ahumorous stylized veneer:references It consists (beer pong, of four Bruenchenhein). Septemberspray paint, 2013 images plumbing that theenvironment—plastic imagery of contemporary is reallyular familiar order anda revisited, chain-smoking coaxing the witch more among them), 2014.nylon, Anodized sequin pins, justthinkexhibitionfrom made ofEugene it methat Von giggle, way consumer because because culture, I Igrew think but upthe insincerity channelsaof spray-tannedattentive replete womanvisitor with intogood-looking doing a somewhat yoga, andalienactors spray paint, images to me, and comforting. If everything not to mention the setting in which it’s metal frame, ribbon, theythat"lOOOISLAND"Bruenchenhein's environment—plasticsaw my work his as relationship really is low. really to Ithese don’t familiar materials lendsa chain-smoking viewing rhythm, witch one among that works them), in tension fromdigitally Eugene printed Von atJoeSheftel1998 Works in in uptown is glass, then everythingand humorous in my referencesviewed, (beer lit in pong, fuchsia neon. But filmed toNew me, York. and comforting.weight toIf his everything middle-class referencesnot to mentionwith the therhythms setting by which in which we under it’s BOTH IMAGES: ALEX DACORTE Bruenchenhein'snylon, sequin pins, thinkClay ofcatalogue, it that way becausehouse is I plastic.grew up But in it’s shiny,a spray-tanned it’s colorful, woman at half doing speed yoga, and and narrated by subtitles spray1998 Works paint, in images thatuptownfoam, environment—plastic and is glass, then everything is really in familiar my viewed,a chain-smoking lit in fuchsia witch neon. among But them), filmed fromClay catalogue,Eugene Von housetape, is56x64 plastic. in. But it’sit doesn’t shiny, break—allit’s colorful, of theseat half things, speed to me,and narratedrelating by an subtitles epic, and often hilarious, poetic foam,Bruenchenhein's and to me, and comforting.make If everything it seem really royal notand to luxe.” mention the settingtreatise inwritten which by it’s Jayson Musson, the tape, 56x64 in. RIGHT: 1998 Works in 38it MODERNdoesn’t PAINTERS break—all FEBRUARY 2015 of BLOUINARTINFO.COM these things, to me, relating an epic, and often hilarious, poetic uptownDa Corte is as glass, Eminem then everythingDa Corte possessesin my someviewed, aesthetic lit in and fuchsia piece—projected neon. But filmed as a four-hour loop— Clay catalogue, make it seem really royal and luxe.” treatise written by Jayson Musson, the foam,RIGHT: and housein a promotional is plastic. But it’ssocial shiny, overlap it’s colorful,with other youngat half artists speed and narratedis designed by subtitles to be experienced in no partic tape,Da Corte 56x64 as Eminem in. it doesn’timageDa Corte for break—all the possesses of somethese aestheticthings, to and me, relatingpiece—projected an epic, andas a oftenfour-hour hilarious, loop— poetic in a promotional September 2013 plumbing the imagery of contemporary ular order and revisited, coaxing the more socialexhibition overlap with other young artists is designed to be experienced in no partic RIGHT:image for the make it seem really royalconsumer and luxe.” culture, but thetreatise sincerity written of by Jaysonattentive Musson, visitor theinto a somewhat alien plumbing"lOOOISLAND" the imagery of contemporary ular order and revisited, coaxing the more SeptemberDa Corte as 2013 Eminem Da Corte possesseshis some relationship aesthetic to and these materialspiece—projected lends as viewinga four-hour rhythm, loop— one that works in tension exhibitionin a promotional consumeratJoeSheftel culture, in but the sincerity of attentive visitor into a somewhat alien socialNew York.overlap with otherweight young to his artists middle-class is references designed to be experiencedwith the rhythms in no partic by which we under BOTH IMAGES: ALEX DACORTE image"lOOOISLAND" for the his relationship to these materials lends viewing rhythm, one that works in tension SeptemberatJoeSheftel 2013 in plumbing the imagery of contemporary ular order and revisited, coaxing the more exhibitionNew York. weightconsumer to hisculture, middle-class but the sincerityreferences of withattentive the rhythmsvisitor into by whicha somewhat we under alien BOTH IMAGES: ALEX DACORTE "lOOOISLAND" atJoeSheftel in his relationship to these materials lends viewing rhythm, one that works in tension

New York. 38weight MODERN to PAINTERS his middle-class FEBRUARY 2015 BLOUINARTINFO.COMreferences with the rhythms by which we under BOTH IMAGES: ALEX DACORTE

38 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2015 BLOUINARTINFO.COM Ballard, Thea. “Inorganic Matter: Layering Space to Explore Family History.” 27, no. 2, FebruaryModern 2015, Painters pp. 36–38. 38 MODERN PAINTERS FEBRUARY 2015 BLOUINARTINFO.COM MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Droitcour, Brian. “Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson.” 103, no. 2, February 2015, p. 110. Art in America FEATURE

FEATURE

MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY Plastic523 West 24th Street, New YorkSpiritualism,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

and NiceFEATURE Hair

Laura McLean-Ferris on the art o f Alex Da Corte

Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair

Laura McLean-Ferris on the art o f Alex Da Corte

Plastic Spiritualism 7 2 MARCH / APRIL 201 5

and Nice7 2 MARCH / APRIL 201 5 Hair McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art

Laura McLean-Ferris on the art o f Alex Da Corte

7 2 MARCH / APRIL 201 5 McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art FEATURE FEATURE

TheThe beautiful beautiful peoplepeople ofof this this worldworld wearwear theirtheir spandexspandex Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972),(1972), PagePage 73:73: The beautiful people of this world wear their spandex Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Page 73: leggingsleggings high-waisted high-waisted andand tight.tight. TheThe womenwomen wearwear theirtheir aa filmfilm that the artist has made reference to more thanthan BorderlandBorderland StateState (Pink(Pink leggings high-waisted and tight. The women wear their a film that the artist has made reference to more than BorderlandPavor Nocturnus) State (Pink (2014) gleaminggleaming artificialartificial hairhair with with exquisiteexquisite poise,poise, andand twirltwirl onceonce in his work, presents this kind of hystericized Pavor Nocturnus) (2014) gleaming artificial hair with exquisite poise, and twirl once in his work, presents this kind of hystericized PavorCourtesyCourtesy Nocturnus) o o f f the the Artist Artist (2014) and and itit aroundaround theirtheir fingersfingers often.often. TheyThey are,are, afterafter all,all, thethe space,space, a closed box for drama connected toto thethe restrest Courtesy o f the Artist and it around their fingers often. They are, after all, the space, a closed box for drama connected to the rest DavidDavid Risley Risley Gallery,Gallery, beautifulbeautiful people. people. The The spaces spaces thatthat theythey inhabitinhabit andand movemove ofof the world only tenuously. The red room in the fifi DavidCopenhagen Risley Gallery, beautiful people. The spaces that they inhabit and move of the world only tenuously. The red room in the fi Copenhagen throughthrough havehave aa total,total, alloverallover aesthetic,aesthetic, deckeddecked outout likelike nnaleale of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990-91), inin whichwhich Copenhagen through have a total, allover aesthetic, decked out like nale of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990-91), in which sets for kids’ TV shows, well-behaved nightclubs, or dwarvesdwarves and dead women speak a somnambulistic PagePage 74:74: sets for kids’ TV shows, well-behaved nightclubs, or Page 74: sets for kids’ TV shows, well-behaved nightclubs, or dwarves and dead women speak a somnambulistic “A“A NightNight inin Hell”Hell” conceptconcept stores stores for for useless useless items.items. TheThe décordécor isis preciseprecise andand backwards-speak,backwards-speak, might be another example, or thethe “A Night in Hell” concept stores for useless items. The décor is precise and backwards-speak, might be another example, or the InstallationInstallation viewview at at Carl Carl graphic,graphic, whether whether in in roomsrooms thatthat areare paintedpainted inin princessyprincessy redred jeweljewel box theater from the same director’s Mulbol- Installation view at Carl graphic, whether in rooms that are painted in princessy red jewel box theater from the same director’s Mulbol- Kostyal,Kostyal, StockholmStockholm (2014)(2014) shades of violet and lemon, or in in those covered in land Drive (2001). Sceneography, as witnessed in Da Kostyal, Stockholm (2014) shades of violet and lemon, or in in those covered in land Drive (2001). Sceneography, as witnessed in Da CourtesyCourtesy o o f f the the Artist Artist and and shades of violet and lemon, or in in those covered in land Drive (2001). Sceneography, as witnessed in Da Courtesy o f the Artist and patternspatterns and and brightsbrights reminiscentreminiscent ofof the the highhigh postmodpostmod Corte’s work, is a way of looking at spaces and objects CarlCarl Kostyal, Kostyal, London/ London/ patterns and brights reminiscent of the high postmod Corte’s work, is a way of looking at spaces and objects Carl Kostyal, London/ eernistrnist stylestyle associatedassociated withwith thethe MemphisMemphis group.group. ThisThis inin aa wayway thatthat is time-based and inherently theatrical:theatrical: StockholmStockholm ernist style associated with the Memphis group. This in a way that is time-based and inherently theatrical: Stockholm worldworld isis EasternSports EasternSports (2014),(2014), aa seriesseries ofof videos videos createdcreated occasionallyoccasionally we are explicitly directed by the viewer. world is EasternSports (2014), a series of videos created occasionally we are explicitly directed by the viewer. PagePage 75:75: byby Alex Alex DaDa CorteCorte andand JaysonJayson Musson,Musson, andand scoredscored byby For a recent exhibition, “Delirium 1” at David Risley inin Page 75: by Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson, and scored by For a recent exhibition, “Delirium 1” at David Risley in AlexAlex Da Da Corte Corte and and Jayson Jayson Devonté Hynes. The melancholic scripts, mostly de Copenhagen, for example, the gallery spaces were de Alex Da Corte and Jayson DevontéDevonté Hynes. Hynes. TheThe melancholicmelancholic scripts,scripts, mostlymostly de Copenhagen, for example, thethe gallerygallery spaces spaces were were de de Musson,Musson, EasternsportsEasternsports livered in French in order to playfully acknowledge scribed in the exhibition texts as “Scene 1” and “Scene Musson,(video still, Easternsports 2014) liveredlivered in in French French inin orderorder toto playfullyplayfully acknowledgeacknowledge scscribedribed in the exhibition textstexts asas “Scene“Scene 1”1” and and “Scene “Scene (video(video still, still, 2014) 2014) thethe philosophicphilosophic “depthiness”“depthiness” oftenoften attributedattributed toto thisthis 2.”2.” Both areas, one with a red color scheme and thethe CourtesyCourtesy o o f f the the Artists; Artists; the philosophic “depthiness” often attributed to this 2.” Both areas, one with a red color scheme and the CourtesyFleisher/Ollman o f the Artists; Gallery, language in an anodyne, shallow-seeming environment, other with a purple one, had mirrored floors with an Fleisher/OllmanFleisher/Ollman Gallery, Gallery, languagelanguage in in an an anodyne, anodyne, shallow-seeming shallow-seeming environment,environment, other with a purple one,one, hadhad mirroredmirrored floorsfloors with with an an Philadelphia; Joe Sheftel are subtitled onscreen, and feature several ruminations Escher-like tile pattern on them, backdrops for objects, Philadelphia;Philadelphia; Joe Joe Sheftel Sheftel areare subtitled subtitled onscreen, onscreen, and and feature feature severalseveral ruminationsruminations Escher-like tile pattern onon them,them, backdropsbackdrops for for objects, objects, Gallery, New York; and on existential emptiness, though they are regularly co mirrors, fabric works and photographs. From “Scene Gallery,Gallery, New New York; York; and and onon existential existential emptiness, emptiness, thoughthough theythey areare regularlyregularly co mirrors, fabric works andand photographs.photographs. FromFrom “Scene“Scene SalonSalon 94,94, NewNew YorkYork medic. “Are you an artist? My condolences if you are,” 1”: “The viewer (you) enters the room. The smell of Salon 94, New York mmedic.edic. “Are “Are you you an an artist? artist? MyMy condolences condolences ifif you you are,” 1”: “The viewer (you) entersenters thethe room.room. TheThe smellsmell ofof read the words on screen, as we watch a model dressed Calvin Klein’s Obsession lingers. There is an acrylic Previous page: read the words on screen, as we watch a model dressed Calvin Klein’s Obsession lingers. There is an acrylic PreviousPrevious page: page: read the words on screen, as we watch a model dressed Calvin Klein’s Obsession lingers. There is an acrylic “Die Hexe” in a tight green onesie gets a haircut. In terms of ac tiled floor. Its pattern is a lattice-type grid; the spaces “Die“Die Hexe” Hexe” inin a atight tight green green onesieonesie getsgets aa haircut.haircut. InIn termsterms ofof acac tiled floor. Its patternpattern isis aa lattice-typelattice-type grid;grid; thethe spaces spaces Installation view at tion, Easternsports features a number of slow-motion in between the lattice lines are mirror. It appears as if InstallationInstallation view view at at tiotion,n, Easternsports Easternsports features features a a number number ofof slow-motionslow-motion in between thethe latticelattice lineslines areare mirror.mirror. ItIt appears appears as as if if Luxembourg & Dayan, LuxembourgLuxembourg & & Dayan, Dayan, set pieces: a female figure with a deep orange tan and you might have to walk only on the lines for fear of New York (2015) setset pieces: pieces: a a female female figure figure with with aa deepdeep orangeorange tantan andand you might have to walkwalk onlyonly onon thethe lineslines forfor fearfear of of NewNew York York (2015) (2015) yellow-blonde hair dives into a cage full of balloons falling into nothingness. There is a green mirror shelf Courtesy o f the Artist and yellow-blondeyellow-blonde hairhair divesdives intointo aa cagecage fullfull ofof balloonsballoons falling into nothingness. ThereThere isis aa greengreen mirrormirror shelf shelf CourtesyCourtesy o of the f the Artist Artist and and on the wall. As you enter you see yourself in green. You Luxembourg & Dayan, beforebefore enteringentering intointo aa meditativemeditative state;state; threethree shirtlessshirtless on the wall. As you enter you see yourself in green. You LuxembourgLuxembourg & & Dayan, Dayan, before entering into a meditative state; three shirtless on the wall. As you enter you see yourself in green. You New York. Photography by men in red swimming caps and matching leggings are comforted. You think of money.” The exhibition, NewNew York. York. Photography Photography by by menmen inin redred swimming swimming capscaps andand matchingmatching leggingsleggings are comforted. You thinkthink ofof money.”money.” TheThe exhibition,exhibition, John Bernardo carefully set up, and then play, a game of beer pong as well as the narrative, unfolds in the nonsequitous JohnJohn Bernardo Bernardo carefullycarefully set set up, up, andand thenthen play,play, aa gamegame ofof beerbeer pongpong as well as the narrative, unfoldsunfolds inin thethe nonsequitousnonsequitous with what appears to be de-labeled bottles of Moun way that dreams and nightmares do, inciting feelings withwith what what appears appears toto bebe de-labeledde-labeled bottlesbottles ofof Moun way that dreams and nightmaresnightmares do,do, incitinginciting feelings feelings tain Dew; a mummy croons a sermon on love songs to of responsibility, guilt, pleasure or unease. taintain Dew; Dew; a a mummy mummy croons croons aa sermon sermon onon lovelove songssongs to of responsibility, guilt,guilt, pleasurepleasure oror unease.unease. a congregation of chattering, pretty women. Hynes’s As Da Corte explains in an email exchange: “Work a acongregation congregation ofof chattering, chattering, prettypretty women.women. Hynes’sHynes’s As Da Corte explains inin anan emailemail exchange:exchange: “Work “Work music, composed in response to Da Corte’s palettes, is ing with stages, or theater in a sculptural sense, actively music,music, composed composed in in response response toto DaDa Corte’sCorte’s palettes,palettes, is iningg with stages, or theatertheater inin aa sculpturalsculptural sense, sense, actively actively constructed from repeated piano-based motifs, other implicates the viewer’s subjectivity if there are no other constructedconstructed from from repeatedrepeated piano-basedpiano-based motifs,motifs, otherother implicates the viewer’sviewer’s subjectivitysubjectivity if if there there are are no no other other percussive instruments and the sad synths of a curiously players on the given stage. The viewer is the player, the percussivepercussive instruments instruments and and the the sad sad synthssynths ofof a a curiouslycuriously players on the given stage.stage. TheThe viewerviewer is is the the player, player, the the touching video game. Indeed, owing to Hynes’s color/ star. There is a sense in these scenes that the camera is touchingtouching video video game. game. Indeed, Indeed, owingowing toto Hynes’sHynes’s color/color/ star. There is a sensesense inin thesethese scenesscenes thatthat the the camera camera is is sound based synesthesia, color is a point of convergence on you, but always behind your head, and there is no soundsound based based synesthesia, synesthesia, color color is is aa pointpoint ofof convergence convergence on you, but always behindbehind youryour head,head, andand therethere is is no no between the two artists. audience but you.” Given the developments that have betweenbetween the the two two artists. artists. audience but you.” GivenGiven thethe developmentsdevelopments that that have have In Easternsports we are offered a long, detailed view occurred in the current technological age, in which we InIn Easternsports Easternsports we we are are offered offered aa long,long, detaileddetailed viewview occurred in the current technologicaltechnological age,age, in in which which we we of Da Corte’s installations as a complete universe. The can have little expectation that our every movement is ofof Da Da Corte’s Corte’s installations installations asas aa completecomplete universe.universe. The can have little expectation thatthat ourour every every movement movement is is artist’s exhibitions are often constructed as though they not being recorded by a security camera, an algorithm artist’sartist’s exhibitions exhibitions are are often often constructed constructed asas thoughthough theythey not being recorded byby aa securitysecurity camera,camera, anan algorithm algorithm are stage sets or studios, such that viewers are often or the iPhone of a stranger or a friend, a sensation of areare stage stage sets sets or or studios, studios, suchsuch thatthat viewersviewers areare oftenoften or the iPhone of aa strangerstranger oror aa friend,friend, aa sensationsensation of of positioned as uneasy actors. Particular props tend to being potentially observed has become familiar to us. positionedpositioned as as uneasy uneasy actors.actors. ParticularParticular propsprops tendtend to being potentially observedobserved hashas becomebecome familiarfamiliar to to us. us. reappear across the artist’s installations — brightly However, it’s the unnerving emptiness, proppiness and reappearreappear across across thethe artist’sartist’s installationsinstallations —— brightlybrightly However, it’s the unnerving emptiness,emptiness, proppinessproppiness and and colored shampoo bottles, soda drinks, mops, ladders, artificiality of Da Corte’s installations that drive this coloredcolored shampoo shampoo bottles,bottles, sodasoda drinks,drinks, mops,mops, ladders,ladders, artificiality of Da Corte’sCorte’s installationsinstallations thatthat drivedrive this this paper cups, balloons, bouncy balls, often arranged by skewed form of solo performativity. We are simply paperpaper cups, cups, balloons, balloons, bouncybouncy balls,balls, oftenoften arrangedarranged by skewed form of solosolo performativity.performativity. WeWe areare simplysimply color. There’s an equalizing energy at play in the artist’s performing for an audience of one: ourselves. “Any color.color. There’s There’s an an equalizing equalizing energy energy at at playplay inin thethe artist’sartist’s performing for an audienceaudience ofof one:one: ourselves.ourselves. “Any“Any treatment of his objects and products. In one of the gesture of performance, even just looking in the space,” treatmenttreatment of of his his objectsobjects andand products.products. InIn oneone ofof thethe gesture of performance, eveneven justjust lookinglooking in in the the space,” space,” EasternsportsEasternsports videosvideos wewe seesee aa womanwoman walking through explains the artist, “is one that activates the stage and Easternsports videos we see a woman walking through explains the artist, “is“is oneone thatthat activatesactivates thethe stagestage and and severalseveral spaces,spaces, takingtaking severalseveral such items from display gives new purpose to the special effects to disengage several spaces, taking several such items from display gives new purpose toto thethe specialspecial effectseffects toto disengagedisengage shelves,shelves, asas aa malemale attendantattendant assists her, and placing or reengage youryour psychologicalpsychological state.state. ButBut thethe experiexperi shelves, as a male attendant assists her, and placing or reengage your psychological state. But the experi themthem unceremoniouslyunceremoniously inin aa shoulder bag without a ence is completelycompletely yours.yours. InIn aa momentmoment whenwhen wewe areare them unceremoniously in a shoulder bag without a ence is completely yours. In a moment when we are secondsecond thought.thought. She’sShe’s an aesthetic shopper with no all dancing forfor thethe camera,camera, II thinkthink ofof these these sculpturalsculptural second thought. She’s an aesthetic shopper with no all dancing for the camera, I think of these sculptural needneed forfor money,money, inin a world in which every object is void spaces asas onesones thatthat existexist beyondbeyond thethe fourthfourth wall,wall, aa need for money, in a world in which every object is void spaces as ones that exist beyond the fourth wall, a banalbanal andand Ikea-like,Ikea-like, all part of the same holistic or all- place with nono exitexit andand nono entry.entry. AA freefree place.”place.” HeHe addsadds banal and Ikea-like, all part of the same holistic or all- place with no exit and no entry. A free place.” He adds encompassingencompassing brand.brand. an afterthought: “It’s“It’s funnyfunny toto thinkthink ofof a a placeplace with with nono encompassing brand. an afterthought: “It’s funny to think of a place with no WeWe arrivearrive in the rooms that Da Corte constructs exit or entryentry asas free.”free.” We arrive in the rooms that Da Corte constructs exit or entry as free.” forfor hishis exhibitionsexhibitions asas thoughthough we have travelled down a Da Corte’s attentivenessattentiveness toto scenes,scenes, stagingstaging andand for his exhibitions as though we have travelled down a Da Corte’s attentiveness to scenes, staging and corridorcorridor intointo aa kindkind ofof “off-world” where normal rules context hashas notnot stoppedstopped withwith hishis ownown work,work, andand hehe corridor into a kind of “off-world” where normal rules context has not stopped with his own work, and he dodo notnot quitequite apply.apply. The apartment in Rainer Werner has often turnedturned toto creatingcreating displaydisplay systemssystems forfor thethe do not quite apply. The apartment in Rainer Werner has often turned to creating display systems for the

77------MARCH MARCH // APRILAPRIL 201 201 55 77---- MARCH / APRIL 201 5 McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art FEATURE

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work of others, even embedding works of artists such experience of looking. When greeted by a blood-red This page: as Nancy Lupo, Brendan Smith and Alex Ebstein into wall, you may feel alarmed or have a sense of urgency “Delirium 1 ” his own Plastic Paintings (2013), which he displayed in while looking at the rest of the space, even if the red Installation view at David work of others, even embedding works of artists such experience of looking. When greeted by a blood-red ThisRisley page: Gallery, Copenhagen a pinkwork carpeted of others, environment even embedding at the worksInstitute of artists of Con such doesexperience not accompany of looking. you.”When The greeted suburban by a blood-red familiarity This page: work of others, even embedding works of artists such experience of looking. When greeted by a blood-red “DeliriumThis(2014) page: 1Courtesy ” o f the Artist as asNancy Nancy Lupo, Lupo, Brendan Brendan Smith Smith and and Alex Alex Ebstein Ebstein intointo wall,wall, you may feel alarmed oror have have a a sense sense of of urgency urgency “Delirium 1 ” temporaryas Nancy at Lupo,Art Maine Brendan College Smith of and Art, Alex inviting Ebstein visi into ofwall, many you of may the feelobjects, alarmed too —or haveV05 ashampoos, sense of urgency Swiffers Installation“Deliriumand David 1 view” Risley at David Gallery, hishis own own Plastic Plastic Paintings Paintings (2013), (2013), which which he he displayed displayed inin whilewhile looking at the restrest ofof the the space,space, even even if if the the red red InstallationInstallation view view at atDavid David tors histo rearrangeown Plastic the Paintings plastic (2013), panels which as they he displayedchose. His in —while is another looking shortcutat the rest into of the the space, subconscious even if the ofred the RisleyRisleyCopenhagen Gallery, Gallery, Copenhagen Copenhagen a pinka pink carpeted carpeted environment environment at at the the Institute Institute ofof Con Con doesdoes not accompany you.”you.” TheThe suburbansuburban familiarity familiarity Risley Gallery, Copenhagen a pink carpeted environment at the Institute of Con does not accompany you.” The suburban familiarity (2014)(2014) Courtesy Courtesy o f othe f the Artist Artist nextt emporaryproject, “Die at Art Hexe” Maine at College Luxembourg of Art, inviting& Dayan’s visi viewer,of many beingof the objects,mid-range, too — mass-produced V05 shampoos, Swiffersproducts (2014) Courtesy o f the Artist temporary at Art Maine College of Art, inviting visi of many of the objects, too — V05 shampoos, Swiffers andand David David Risley Risley Gallery, Gallery, townhousetemporary gallery at Art space Maine in College New York, of Art, will inviting create visi a thatof many are ofavailable the objects, at toomost — supermarketsV05 shampoos, andSwiffers delis. andNext David page: Risley Gallery, torstors to torearrange rearrange the the plastic plastic panels panels as as they they chose. chose. 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Next page:The Reckoner and The townhouse gallery space in New York, will create a that are available at most supermarkets and delis. UntitledNextUntitled page: (Tinky (Tinky Winky: Winky: Gober,linkedlinked Bjarne series series Melgaardof of densely densely atmospheric,and atmospheric, Mike Kelley. cinematic cinematic These environ environ are VolumizingStrippingStripping them shampoo of their is branding,branding,orange, moisturizing however,however, renders renders is pink, UntitledReckoning (Tinky (for Winky: St. linked series of densely atmospheric, cinematic environ Stripping them of their branding, however, renders MysteriousMysterious Skin Skin (from (from artistsm entswhoments for share for displaying displaying Da Corte’s works works attentiveness by by Haim Haim Steinbach, Steinbach, to the politics Robert Robert anti-dandruffthemthem strangelystrangely is toothless,toothless,blue — choicesandand perhapsperhaps that more makemore absurd. absurd.a kind of TheTheMysterious ReckonerBartholomew)) Reckoner Skin and and The(from The (2014) ments for displaying works by Haim Steinbach, Robert them strangely toothless, and perhaps more absurd. and Gober,atmospheresGober, Bjarne Bjarne ofMelgaard Melgaarddisplay, andand and Mike forMike the Kelley. 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These are Volumizing shampoo is orange, moisturizing is pink, ReckoningCarl Kostyal, (for St. London/ theatricallyartistsartists who positionswho share share Da themDa Corte’s Corte’s as “fatherattentiveness attentiveness figures.” to to the the Kelley’s politics politics ing,anti-dandruffanti-dandruff but which is blueseems —— babyish choiceschoices thatthatand make makeabsurd a akind kindwithout. of of Bartholomew))Bartholomew)) (2014) (2014) artists who share Da Corte’s attentiveness to the politics anti-dandruff is blue — choices that make a kind of CourtesyCourtesyBartholomew))Stockholm of of the the Artist Artist (2014) and and workand willand atmospheres beatmospheres shown in of ofa display, gingham display, and and room; for for the theSteinbach’s exhibition exhibition in hehe Theysensesense whenspeakwhen accompaniedto a culture byby that logos, logos, is imagery imageryspoon andfed and brandproducts brand and atmospheres of display, and for the exhibition he sense when accompanied by logos, imagery and brand CarlCarlCourtesy Kostyal, Kostyal, of London/ the London/ Artist and theatricallytheatrically positions positions them them as as “father “father figures.” figures.” Kelley’s Kelley’s iing,ng, butbut which seems babyishbabyish andand absurdabsurd without. without. Carl Kostyal, London/ a pantrytheatrically smelling positions of spices them in aswhich “father the figures.” older artist’sKelley’s anding, easilybut which manipulated seems babyish by basic and visualabsurd sweeteners. without. 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I create,than mycolor mouth,” is a way writes of introducingda Corte. “In timethe scenes into thethat Removedclass look fromextremely the bathroom strange but closet, regal ina purplethese voids. Wetjet thanI create, my mouth,” color is writes a way daof Corte.introducing “In the time scenes into that the classRemoved look fromextremely the bathroom strange but closet, regal a purplein these Wetjet voids. I create, color is a way of introducing time into the Removed from the bathroom closet, a purple Wetjet I create, color is a way of introducing time into the Removed from the bathroom closet, a purple Wetjet

77 8 8— — MARCHMARCH / APRILAPRIL 2 2 0 0 15 15 7 8 — MARCH / APRIL 2 0 15 McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism7 8 — MARCHand Nice / APRIL Hair.” 2 0 15 , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art FEATUREFEATURE

SwifferSwiffer cancan bebe transformedtransformed fromfrom aa cheapcheap mopmop intointo aa regalregal purplepurple staffstaff that that connotesconnotes CrownCrown RoyalRoyal andand AlexAlex Da Da CorteCorte (b.(b. 1980, 1980, USA) USA) liveslives in in Philadelphia.Philadelphia. velvetvelvet andand Prince.Prince. MostMost ofof the the objectsobjects I I useuse areare typitypi callycally utilizedutilized forfor cleaning, cleaning, andand cleaning cleaning is is oneone way way of of SoloSolo shows: shows: Luxembourg Luxembourg & & Dayan, Dayan, NewNew York;York; exercisingexercising control. control. AA space space with with nono cleaning cleaning tools tools isis aa InstituteInstitute o o f fContemporary Contemporary Art, Art, Philadelphia Philadelphia spacespace with with nono control, control, andand with with nono control control comescomes thethe (with(with Jayson Jayson Musson); Musson); WhiteWhite Cube, Cube, London;London; reinventionreinvention of of control, control, class class and and power.” power.” DavidDavid Risley, Risley, Copenhagen; Copenhagen; Carl Carl Kostydl, Kostydl, Stockholm; Stockholm; InIn otherother words, words, DaDa Corte’s Corte’s work work givesgives usus accessaccess toto JoeJoe Sheftel Sheftel Gallery, Gallery, NewNew York;York; Institute Institute anan airyairy spiritualspiritual worldworld thatthat wewe alreadyalready partakepartake inin asas oo f fContemporary Contemporary Art, Art, Portland Portland (ME). (ME). dreamingdreaming consumers.consumers. WeWe buildbuild ourour identitiesidentities aroundaround GroupGroup shows: shows: Mitchell-Innes Mitchell-Innes & & Nash, Nash, New New York;York; brandedbranded scentsscents andand variousvarious seductiveseductive consumerconsumer prodprod HigherHigher Pictures, Pictures, NewNew York;York; American American Contemporary,Contemporary, ucts,ucts, andand fill fill spacesspaces vacated vacated byby previous previous formsforms of of labor labor NewNew York;York; Rachel Rachel Uffner Uffner Gallery, Gallery, NewNew York;York; oror spirituality. spirituality. “We“We are are living living in in a a moment moment where where there there RodRod Barton, Barton, London; London; American American University University isis aa plethoraplethora ofof new new idols,idols, somesome ofof which which areare plastic,plastic, MuseumMuseum at at the the Katzen Katzen Arts Arts Center, Center, Washington; Washington; andand thethe lineslines thatthat define define ourour spiritual spiritual liveslives inin relationrelation StudioStudio Museum, Museum, NewNew York;York; Zach Zach Feuer, Feuer, NewNew York.York. toto these these idols idols are are blurry,” blurry,” ends ends thethe artist’s artist’s e-mail. e-mail. “E “E a a s st -t - UpcomingUpcoming shows: shows: Gio Gio Marconi, Marconi, Milan Milan (solo). (solo). ernsportsernsports was was guided guided byby this this fracture fracture between between one’s one’s unun derstandingderstanding of of self self and and what what the the self self actually actually wants wants or or LauraLaura McLean-FerrisMcLean-Ferris is is Flash Flash ArtArt USUS Editor. Editor. needs.needs. ItIt referencedreferenced thethe spiritualspiritual onlyonly inin thatthat itit was was aa playplay aboutabout lifestyleslifestyles andand thethe sportsport ofof fetishizing fetishizing thethe unattainable.”unattainable.” LookingLooking atat aa sweet-smelling,sweet-smelling, hygienichygienic dreamdream inin whichwhich everythingeverything isis alwaysalways cleanclean andand youryour hairhair isis alwaysalways perfect,perfect, youyou realizerealize thatthat it’sit’s alsoalso aa formform ofof nightmare. nightmare.

7979 ------MARCHMARCH / / APRIL APRIL 20X520X5 McLean-Ferris, Laura. “Plastic Spiritualism and Nice Hair.” , no. 301, March/April 2015, pp. 72–79. Flash Art MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC THEFTS in postwar cinema might also be the most subtle—not a spectacular heist but a scene in Robert Bresson’s classic Pickpocket (1959), in which a disembodied tangle of larcenous hands pilfer wallets by replacing them with folded newspapers of similar weight and dimension, leaving their victims unaware of the cunning substitution. I was reminded of this transactional choreography of intimate dipping and reaching among bodies—its erotics of voyeurism, violation, and immersion, as well as its logic of exchange—as I climbed through “Die Hexe” (The Witch), Alex Da Corte’s kinky Merzbau of an exhibition, at Luxembourg & Dayan in New York this past spring. It was one of the latest in a series of immersive environments, begun in 2013, that the artist has constructed at venues such as White Cube in London, David Risley Gallery in Copenhagen, Oko

Godfrey, Annie Larmon. “Alex Da Corte.” 53, no. 10, Summer 2015, pp. 343–45. Artforum and Joe Sheftel Gallery in New York, and Gió Marconiin Milan. Each one reaffirms the artist’s fetish for high production values, his attention to craft, and his tendency to revel in trouvailles, as well as his fixation on the myriad interplays between desire and presence, memory and perception, and, more broadly, the virtual and the real that have come to define visual and consumer culture.

Da Corte’s installations are intricately constructed from an improbable range of objects and references: John Carpenter B-movie horror schlock, party-store costumery, handmade reproductions of the artist’s family heirlooms, cheap commercial products (Goya juices and VO5 shampoos), and other people’s art—all metastasizing into a preternaturally photogenic fever-dream cosmology. Distinctions between the actual and the constructed are often surreptitious: Trompe l’oeil pranks abound. Da Corte often plays, too, with the olfactory, in sensory sleights of hand. Entering Easternsports, 2014, a video installation the artist made in collaboration with Jayson Musson at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, for example, we encountered oranges scattered on a pink carpet, accompanied by the sickly sweet fragrance of overripe fruit. But the oranges were actually hollow plastic shells and the scent was synthetic: citrus air freshener. Unlike Bresson’s pickpocket, Da Corte gives us both originals and copies, keepsakes and trifles, disturbing and disrupting our assumptions about the objects with which he confronts us.

“Die Hexe” began and ended with a drain. You might have missed the first, Robert Gober’s Untitled, 1993—an exact replica of a drain rendered in chrome-plated bronze—as it was visible only through a peephole in a locked door, behind which it occupied a mirrored mise en abyme. This secret cavity was built into the gallery’s ground-level space, which had been transformed into a gothic antechamber, soaked with dank black light that barely illuminated a series of handcrafted wicker baskets, LED candles, a costume witch nose, and rubber candy apples. The artist describes many of these trappings as citations of objects belonging to his amnesiac grandmother, but they also seemed chosen for their smugly reflexive references to the haunting promised by the installation’s title. A hallway, clad in digitally printed gingham wallpaper, led visitors into a jaundiced-orange sitting room in which a replica nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Dutch rocker, motorized by Da Corte, quietly lurched to and fro. Mike Kelley’s afghan Arena #8 (Leopard), 1990, was layered over a hand-braided rug (a copy of one belonging to the artist’s grandmother) in a gesture that both amplified and recast Kelley’s own thesis about the complex psychology of our relationship to domestic objects.

The next space was a surreal cinematic riff: a kind of outré rec room decorated with an enormous blown-up detail of Nicolas Poussin’s painting Midas and Bacchus, ca. 1630, a reproduction of which also decorated the title character’s bedroom in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 melodrama The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. This mural formed the backdrop for a stripper pole and a Bjarne Melgaard remake of an Allen Jones work—a woman on all fours supporting a glass table—festooned with bongs fashioned out of Avon perfume bottles and costume jewelry. It’s a clever marriage of two displays of irrepressible artifice: the savage, bawdy excesses of Melgaard (who has also made his name through flagrant appropriations) and the claustrophobic extravagance of Petra, Fassbinder’s shape-shifting narcissist, who obsessively changes wigs throughout the film. On the third floor was a pallid drop-ceilinged pantry whose floor was lined with linoleum geometries reminiscent of Peter Halley paintings. This space was filled with campy curios, a bottle of piss, and nonperishables poised

Godfrey, Annie Larmon. “Alex Da Corte.” 53, no. 10, Summer 2015, pp. 343–45. Artforum on Haim Steinbach–inflected plastic-laminate shelves, which obscured the inclusion of Steinbach’s own Absolutely Silent, 1987, a gray Formica wedge hosting ready-made carvings of a whale and an owl. The culminating room, also on the third floor, was a bile-hued morgue where, beside a still life composed of fake pears, a taxidermied dove, and Friday the 13th hockey masks, there were three mirrored cadaver drawers (their neon-green handles cannibalized from Swiffer mops). One of the last was thrown open, revealing a small ocean of antiseptic-cum-acrid-smelling Listerine pooled above a precise replica of Gober’s drain.

This double play on Gober is exemplary of the most radical aspects of Da Corte’s work. His modes of repurposing depart from the shock logic of Sherrie Levine’s and Richard Prince’s violations of authorship via copies and fakes, yet they also stray from Sturtevant’s more patient tactics of holistic replacement. Da Corte smuggles the work of others into his so that the borrowed objects (in the case of “Die Hexe,” drawn from private collections) remain intact, even auratic, yet he muddies their effect by juxtaposing them with his own artworks or knockoffs.

Indeed, while Da Corte makes swift work of linking his efforts to those of his (neo-)Conceptual forebears by subsuming them within this project, it would be reductive to pose his practice as some recapitulation of endgame investigations of the commodity-as-sign (it’s too messy and sentimental) or discourses of abjection (it’s too campy). Moreover, the artist is too caught up in the haptic and the mnemonic in ways that respond to contemporary modes of production, distribution, and consumption, which bleed across physical and virtual space, toggling between materiality and immateriality. Da Corte’s retooled take on appropriation translates into physical space the ways in which authorship is challenged, flattened, and reconceived in the digital era, in which procedures of

Godfrey, Annie Larmon. “Alex Da Corte.” 53, no. 10, Summer 2015, pp. 343–45. Artforum editing, selecting, and modulating are second nature to artists and Instagrammers alike. Yet his work also troubles our assumptions about the digital. By incorporating personal narratives and idiosyncratic logics and attending to the ways in which objects persist in the material world—inviting our tactile response and persistently collecting traces of how they have been touched and where they have been— Da Corte asserts these subjectivities as counterpoints against the supposed dominance of all-pervasive immaterial networks.

By replicating and arranging everyday things, Da Corte also explores the ways in which the self is formed through the commodities it covets, often reaching an extreme in which subjectivity itself is dissolved into a series of cultural references or commercial associations. In the 2010–12 performance Fear Street, the artist read eighty-three novels from R. L. Stine’s teenage horror-fiction series before hand-making a mask of the kind worn by the character Michael Myers in Carpenter’s 1978 cult horror classic Halloween. He then donned the disguise and stood in the bushes outside his family’s home in Haddonfield, New Jersey, spying on his mother and father as they cooked dinner and his sister as she watched television. For the video TRUƎ LIFƎ , 2013, he bleached his hair and put in blue contacts to become a strange avatar of Eminem, menacingly staring down the camera as he performs the mundane task of eating a bowl of Cinnamon Life cereal. He reprised this role for the Artforum ad on the occasion of his 2013 exhibition “1 O O O I S L A N D”: He sits on a plush couch, smoking a bong jury-rigged from a salad-dressing bottle. In each of these performances, it seems that by physically immersing himself in another subject, Da Corte is trying to short-circuit the equations of desire that regulate our interactions with pop and consumer culture, structuring complex relations between the familiar and the unfamiliar, fear and longing, fantasy and reality.

Godfrey, Annie Larmon. “Alex Da Corte.” 53, no. 10, Summer 2015, pp. 343–45. Artforum It is perhaps a similar impulse that has motivated Da Corte to articulate an erotics of cut-rate products—dollar-store tchotchkes, acrylic nails, cheap carpeting, off-brand soda. Rather than parodying these objects or even engaging them metaphorically, he wrestles with their materiality, reworking and recasting them to draw out their latent aesthetic dimensions. Take, for example, an ongoing series of paintings begun in 2010, which the artist produces by pouring scented shampoos onto glass and mirrors (see Kiwi Lavender and Untitled [Apricot Breeze], both 2012), allowing the pastel sludge to seep and spread according to its own wayward logic. Or a three-minute video from 2010, Chelsea Hotel No. 2, in which the frame is cropped tightly on disembodied hands variously coated in clumps of flour, ground coffee, or maraschino syrup and pictured against a white ground. These hands perform uncanny, impenetrable rituals: stacking slices of white bread, painting an unripe cherry red with nail polish, severing a slice of bologna with rusty scissors—acts that are confounding but sensual, even libidinous. “I need you,” Leonard Cohen coos in the background, “I don’t need you.” Traces of white dust or leaking juice transfer from hand to object until the crisp products are sullied. These mundane things, wrested from the poverty of their quality by Da Corte’s affections, become, if not objects of desire, then something that could pass for objects that might warrant desire, like a folded newspaper slipped into a breast pocket.

Annie Godfrey Larmon is an assistant editor of Artforum.

Godfrey, Annie Larmon. “Alex Da Corte.” 53, no. 10, Summer 2015, pp. 343–45. Artforum MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

ALEX DA CORTE A SEASON IN HE’LL

NOVEMBER – DECEMBER

Alex Da Corte A Season in Hell Digital video 5:04 minutes 2012

Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In . Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012. Mother’s Annual 2012 Alex Da Corte Bad Blood Digital video 3:59 minutes 2012

Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In . Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012. Mother’s Annual 2012 Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In Mother’s Annual 2012. Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012.

CONDItIONED ECStASy drips from his nose. the videos revel in a fairground presentation of the grotesque, yet there is a lack of exploitation. the man in the videos is less a freakshow curiousity and more a the gallery is dark. By the time the exhibition A Season in He’ll opens each day, the winter sun business-like presenter on a home shopping channel. has set, and no light comes in from the skylights overhead. Three films are projected onto three different gallery walls, in sequence, one after another, a quarter turn to the right. three Presentation is certainly key. The composition of colours within each film is one of the most stools are positioned ready: a theatre before curtain up. three vignettes, three stages set for intensely striking features of the trilogy. the man’s uniform of button-down shirt and smart three similar scenes. The same figure appears in each film, a young man standing behind a trousers goes through three different colour options, just as the background colour is altered table, in front of a plain backdrop, with a variety of objects laid out before him. At the point in each film, and the colour of the table, which also has an extra surface of colour on top each video begins, he and the materials are assembled in position, ready. In slow motion, he of it. In the second video of the sequence, Bad Blood (2012), this results in colour fields of engages in an act that resembles the rituals of drug-taking, while the static camera and his purple, peach and coffee, brown and green. the large watermelon on the table has a section expression reciprocate a lack of emotion. Despite the remove they set, the wet viscerality of removed to reveal the bright red within and on the right, in the midst of a green platter of what we are being shown overwhelmingly provokes an instinctual repulsion. But what really grapes a red liquid passes up a curled tubing as the man sucks. Then, taking the black object can be seen? of this scene,2 a knuckle knife, he punches the side of his face, and the red liquid spurts out his mouth to the opposite side from the impact. Colours become an essential feature of the The first video projected, A Season in Hell (2012), takes its title from Rimbaud’s narcotic- narrative: here the moving red, up the tube and then flying from his mouth; in A Season in Hell infused poem. In the disrupted version of the exhibition title, it is transformed into a the yellow yolk leaves a stain of colour across the table; in each, liquid colour is consumed. potential – an agent with an action to do. the visual simplicity and immediacy of the standard Even the movement of these colours is orchestrated, an integral part of the pre-ordained format used throughout the filming of this trilogy suggests we will find an answer to that plan. Such a dominant use of colour to shape composition links Da Corte to an obvious art question: the point at which the ‘he’ does what ever it is he is going to do. As the first video historical heritage,3 his choice of zingy candy shades an acknowledgement of his pop-cultural begins, and the man within the frame stretches his neck like an athlete before movement, fascination. While every object and colour may seem to be overtly referential, the fact that the sense that all is about to be revealed is intense, and the tension itself is mesmeric. both lend themselves so strongly to the linear, self-contained narrative of each video shifts Staring directly out at the viewer,1 the man is aware of the camera and is as frank a part the emphasis away from knowing cliché to short story. of the display set forth for viewing as the objects on the table. Like them, however, we can not clearly tell what his role is, or very definitely ascertain what he is doing – definitions on Yet the narrative is surreal, and the surreality is cinematic. In the longest film, The Impossible every level become fuzzy round the edges. One reason for this is the quality of digital video, (2012), the most unnatural of ingestions is suggested: the man appears to use a syringe projected on the wall so that the man is practically life-size, resulting in an image that is far to inject his arm with cola. Here the fuzziness of the image deliberately distorts our from razor sharp. In fact, it refutes both the expectation that any digital imagery must offer understanding of what is going on. This film marks most firmly the difference between what the clarity of the hyper-real everyday of HD televisions, and the assumption that a sharper is being shown and what is seen. there is a lingering idea of falsity in the whole set up – in image is a superior image. While the details are unclear, they remain crucially important – short, that the viewer is being set up just as carefully as the stage has been set for filming. hence, the egg that the man picks up from what appears to be a small, decorative vase is Despite the apparently full picture presented to us by the direct, static camera, it denies us black. He cracks the egg and neatly returns the broken shell. then using the available straw, a close up of needle to skin, and it is impossible to tell what is in the bottle from which he he snorts it up. the slowed motion stretches the moment at which the viewer doubts draws the liquid. Everything exists as it appears to us. the exhibitionism of bodily functions what they are really seeing, a technique of prolonging disbelief that is repeated in all the balances against contrived provocation. the viewer’s wincing reaction to it is as much a part films. Also throughout, the necessity of each item laid out on the table to their respective of what the artist has coordinated as the visual presentation. the stimuli on screen and off processes, carefully placed within arm’s reach, suggests an inexplicably studied preparation are unorganic and controlled, especially the use of sound, an aspect that Da Corte exploits (such as the pre-painted egg). this extends the time frame beyond the limits of the temporal fully. the musical soundtracks are not simply an accompanying background, rather they direct suspension that we witness: back into an inevitable past, where all this has been planned; and, an emotional response to the films, building tension as unsubtly as any B-movie horror. by implication, forward into a future where the mess must be cleaned up. First impressions the synths and beats are sinister, revelling in the macabre, rhythmically echoing the action. might suggest that everything is clear to us – from the display-like action on screen to the Slow distortion pulsates loudly through the gallery, dominating our perceptive faculties and signposts to a catalogue of anti-heroic romantic references, the borrowed titles being the creating an additional frame through which we see what is happening. the lack of noise from most direct link to a raft of nineteenth century poètes maudits. there is humour bordering what is being filmed separates us even further from the action, which combined with the on insolence in the subversions of these solitary male idols: however seriously and with highly individualised colours, makes it impossible to place the videos within a real, reachable what reverence the task is undertaken, it is nonetheless an egg that he inhales, and that then world.

Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In . Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012. Mother’s Annual 2012 Drug use, of the kind imitated with non-stimulants here, is often a ritual performed alone, reverently, or in private groups. Presentation of such ceremony in public throws into sharp relief the shadows of quasi-religious sentiment that accompany such methodical practices. Nothing shown is illegal, but there is an apparent degree of self-sacrifice: ostensibly for the self-pleasure of our protagonist, but realistically, since these are ingestibles empty of high, at the behest of the artist, and for the sake of the viewer. In an age of constructed-reality television shows, where viewers knowingly buy into a false picture of the intimate, while celebrities over-expose themselves via twitter and other instantly accessible media, Da Corte traces a history from the Dr Frankensteins who put their life, to their doom, into their work. From the vibrancy of the colour schemes to the scenarios themselves, there is something inherently shocking about what is being shown to us. It has a confrontational value, mediated for us by the guiding hand of the artist, placing the action a solid step away from us, within its own bubble of sound and colour. The value of the objects is at a remove too – whether as kitsch ceremonial tropes or as symbols, stand-ins for the hard stuff. the biggest distance is the temporal one, between the speed at which we view, and the mannered control of the implied habit that we are seeing. In the dark of the gallery, we stumble upon an island inhabited by a solitary lotos-eater:

“In the afternoon they came unto a land/In which it seemed always afternoon… And deep asleep he seem’d, yet all awake/And music in his ears his beating heart did make.”4 the spectacle of Da Corte’s protagonist explores the tension between a communal morality and an isolated, indulgent escapism. By placing him within a spatially distant, exotically coloured box, we are free to place judgements upon the man and his actions, his existence liberated from our world and any of its logic. He is a strong, almost physical, presence, while not operating within any physical or temporal reality that we can touch. We are forced to stand back from him, outsiders within this sensually immersive experience, conditioned in our response and kept in our seats by the ringmaster who is even more elusively present and absent: the artist himself.

“Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought.”5

Mai Blount

1 Except when he moves his gaze unhurriedly to focus on the task in hand. 2 There is a significant black object in each film: the egg, the knife and, in the final film, the totemic candle 3 Sweeping together artists from Matisse to Rothko from the twentieth century alone. 4 Alfred Lord tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters (Poems, 1832) 5 Henry Miller, The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (New york: New Directions, 1962 (1946))

Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In . Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012. Mother’s Annual 2012

Alex Da Corte The Impossible Digital video 11:00 minutes 2012 Drug use, of the kind imitated with non-stimulants here, is often a ritual performed alone, reverently, or in private groups. Presentation of such ceremony in public throws into sharp relief the shadows of quasi-religious sentiment that accompany such methodical practices. Nothing shown is illegal, but there is an apparent degree of self-sacrifice: ostensibly for the self-pleasure of our protagonist, but realistically, since these are ingestibles empty of high, at the behest of the artist, and for the sake of the viewer. In an age of constructed-reality television shows, where viewers knowingly buy into a false picture of the intimate, while celebrities over-expose themselves via twitter and other instantly accessible media, Da Corte traces a history from the Dr Frankensteins who put their life, to their doom, into their work. From the vibrancy of the colour schemes to the scenarios themselves, there is something inherently shocking about what is being shown to us. It has a confrontational value, mediated for us by the guiding hand of the artist, placing the action a solid step away from us, within its own bubble of sound and colour. The value of the objects is at a remove too – whether as kitsch ceremonial tropes or as symbols, stand-ins for the hard stuff. the biggest distance is the temporal one, between the speed at which we view, and the mannered control of the implied habit that we are seeing. In the dark of the gallery, we stumble upon an island inhabited by a solitary lotos-eater:

“Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought.”5

Mai Blount

Alex Da Corte The Impossible Digital video 11:00 minutes 2012

Blount, Mai. “Conditioned Ecstasy.” In . Dublin: Mother’s Tankstation Limited, 2012. Mother’s Annual 2012 MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY 523 West 24th Street, New York,New York 10011 Tel: 212-243-0200 Fax: 212-243-0047

Bollen, Christopher. “Alex Da Corte.” 40, no. 2, April 2010, p. 62. Interview Bollen, Christopher. “Alex Da Corte.” 40, no. 2, April 2010, p. 62. Interview