This past January, Alex da Corte debuted a performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he gave a slide presentation as Marcel Duchamp, facial prosthetics included, at a podium. To his left and high above the ground was a large screen where he projected a carefully choreographed series of images. Behind the screen was the composer, Emily Wells, who accompanied the performance. Over the next hour and change, Alex as Duchamp, spoke on the problems of originality, his regrets, his questions, and a whole range of philosophical and everyday topics and thoughts. Some built on what came prior, others felt like brilliant loose threads, intentionally fraying the linearity of what was, overall, a beautiful and moving performance. I teared up twice. It was a one time performance and Alex is happy to keep it that way.

In so many of Alex’s works, be it a video, a sculpture, or a performance, I’m left treasuring the silver linings of a shattered world, thanks to his ability to transmute the commonplace, and undergird joy with a healthy dose of loss. Color, light, and flash aren’t diversions but tools deployed for a larger apparatus of pleasure that knows its shadow-self intimately.

Join us on Tuesday, September 15th for our first talk of the season where we’ll discuss Alex’s evolution as an artist, his work as a performer, curator, and even collaborator with some of today’s most exciting musical artists like Tierra Whack and Blood Orange.

I personally want to know which character has left the most residue inside Alex’s own self and how every role changes him. Perhaps Roy Lichtenstein is next, as he's co-curated a survey of the artist's works in what I know will be a landmark exhibition at The Whitney Museum opening October 11th.

About the Artist
Alex Da Corte (b. 1980) is a Philadelphia-based artist exploring the layers of contemporary lived experiences through consumer and popular culture. His work creates vivid, dreamlike environments across video, performance, installation, painting, and sculpture, evoking the German genre of Gesamtkunstwerk, or a ‘total work of art,’ to immerse viewers into his world.

Institutional highlights for Da Corte include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Biennale di Venezia, the Whitney Biennial, MASS MoCA, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. He has co-curated the upcoming Roy Lichtenstein exhibition at the Whitney Museum opening October 11th.  He received his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and graduated from Yale University with an MFA in 2010.