Alex Da Corte in “Everyday Icons”

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In a darkened gallery, artist Alex Da Corte appears projected on the wall in Slow Graffiti (2017) as Boris Karloff, performing as both the actor himself and his 1931 role as Frankenstein’s monster, blurring the lines between actor and character. In his work, the artist never appears as himself, but rather, embodies the larger-than-life characters who influence or intrigue him: Mr. Rogers, the Wicked Witch of the West, Marcel Duchamp, and the Pink Panther are but a handful. Studying these characters who exist in worlds of fantasy and cartoon and integrating them into his own expansive artistic vision, Da Corte hopes to gain a deeper understanding of them and learn new ways of thinking.

Sculpture is an essential aspect of Da Corte’s practice, existing within his films as sets and props, alongside them as elements of a larger installation or framing, or as standalone objects. Early in his practice, Da Corte began to embrace sewing as a mode of making sculptures and finding his place, softening objects and ideas we experience as rigid. This sensibility runs throughout the artist’s playful approach to transforming monumental figures of our culture, making room for a “gentler, more tender way of understanding what it means to be human.” Inspired by the objects and images that populate our everyday life, the artist collects and recontextualizes these icons to give them new meanings, asking us to understand them differently in a world where logic is suspended or flipped upside down. 

Da Corte’s work pays homage to the objects and artist figures that have shaped his creative sensibility, whether through drawing inspiration from his grandmother’s sewing and integrating it into his own practice, recreating Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum (1965) filled with his own sculptures and references, or seating a life-sized sculpture of Big Bird on one side of a sculpture referencing the work of Alexander Calder in As Long as the Sun Lasts (2022). In ROY G BIV (2022), Da Corte remixes, updates, and gives new meaning to each of the components he integrates into his performance, collaging elements of culture across multiple eras, locations, and media. Dressed as Rrose Selavy, the alter-ego of artist Marcel Duchamp, the artist lip-syncs to a Stevie Wonder cover of “(They Long To Be) Close To You” by the Carpenters, connecting these disparate works of art on his dream-like stage. Throughout his practice, Da Corte maintains a curious and devotional disposition toward the art and artists who have preceded him, always searching to reconsider the cultural objects that leave lasting marks on our visual world.