Alex Da Corte, still from Rubber Pencil Devil, 2018, HD digital video, color, sound; 2 hr. 56 min. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Candace and Michael Barasch
Whitney Screens: Alex Da Corte’s Rubber Pencil Devil
Online, live-streamed on Vimeo
Friday, April 17, 7:00 pm whitney.org
Engage with video art in the Whitney’s collection while you’re at home with our new series: Whitney Screens. Every Friday, we’re featuring special screenings of video works recently brought into the collection, all by emerging artists, in keeping with the Whitney’s long tradition of supporting artists at the beginning and during key moments of their careers.
Created for the 2019 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Alex Da Corte’s Rubber Pencil Devil is composed of fifty-seven short films packed with references from pop culture—from childhood television icons like Mister Rogers and Sesame Street characters to queer icons like Peter Pan and Dolly Parton. Over the course of nearly three hours, Da Corte presents these familiar characters in very unconventional ways to consider ideas of vulnerability, empathy, and contemporary life.
This screening will present Rubber Pencil Devil in its entirety, with an introduction by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives.
TRUE LIFE, 2013, archival pigment print, anodized metal frame, 30 × 37 1⁄2 inches, Ed. of 5 + 2 AP
Alex Da Corte in Critical Dialogues Series
Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University (Virtual Lecture)
Thursday, April 9, 6:00 pm tyler.temple.edu
Alex Da Corte works across a range of media, including video, performance, installation, painting and sculpture. He regularly combines high-and low-brow American cultural references from branded domestic items to figures from popular culture—to explore and interrogate personal and cultural politics, alienation and the psychological parameters of the human experience.
The happening will take place in the same space it originally scandalized fifty-seven years ago. The performance is free and open to the public.
Words by Rosalyn Drexler
Choreography by Kate Watson-Wallace
Featuring Kristel Baldoz, Melanie Cotton, Danielle Currica, Julia Eichten, Jessica Emmanuel, Ya-ya Failey, Ann-Marie Gover, Imma, Andrew Smith, and Kim Thompson, along with Da Corte and Watson-Wallace. Music composed by Marco Buccelli and Xenia Rubinos, performed with Sunny Ali and Karna Ray.
Alex Da Corte works across a range of media, including video, performance, installation, painting and sculpture. He regularly combines high-and low-brow American cultural references from branded domestic items to figures from popular culture—to explore and interrogate personal and cultural politics, alienation and the psychological parameters of the human experience.
Hirshhorn Museum
Independence Ave SW & 7th St SW
Washington, DC hirshhorn.si.edu
Alex Da Corte’s vibrant installations and mesmerizing video works can be found just as readily at major international art ventures, such as the 2019 Venice Biennale exhibition May You Live in Interesting Times, as on an electronic billboard in Times Square, New York. His visually stimulating and intellectually compelling work spans across a variety of media, including video, installation, sculpture, and painting, and takes cues and inspiration from contemporary pop culture. As a self-proclaimed “anthropologist of the immediate past,” he mines everyday objects from consumer culture to transport viewers through otherworldly experiences created with otherwise mundane, familiar images and items. A long-time Philadelphia resident, Da Corte has an extensive, personal history with the Marcel Duchamp galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a connection that becomes clear through the elevated status of the everyday through his work.
As part of an upcoming exhibition in Philadelphia—Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-garde, which highlights Philadelphia’s artistic accomplishments during the 1960s and ’70s, Da Corte will reinvent Allan Kaprow’s 1962 Happening, Chicken. Happenings grew out of challenges to the categories of art that were initiated by Duchamp and his contemporaries in the early twentieth century. Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-garde is curated by Sid Sachs and Jennie Hirsh. More information can be found at https://www.uarts.edu/invisiblecity.
“Radical Acts” is a program series explores the legacy of Marcel Duchamp through the lens of contemporary artists working today.
Schedule
5:30–6:30 pm | Come early to enjoy a happy hour at Dolcezza Café in the Lobby. Drinks for purchase.
6 pm | Doors open to Lerner Room and after-hours access to Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection.
6:30–7:30 pm | On Duchamp: Alex Da Corte: Conceptual artist Alex Da Corte will join Hirshhorn chief curator Stéphane Aquin to unpack the legacy of Marcel Duchamp and new ways of reinvigorating found materials through the lens of his extensive practice and upcoming projects
We encourage you to arrive early. Lerner Room seating is limited. Any open seats may be released to walk-up visitors 10 minutes before the program.
Blue Pencil Drawing (Zinnia Omelette),
2019.
Inkjet and White Out on paper, cast polyester resin frame, plexiglass, mat-board, coroplast, wooden
strainer, hardware.
17 3⁄16 × 14 13⁄16 in (43.66 × 37.62 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Karma, NY
Alex Da Corte in the Space 1026 Art Auction
Friday, December 13th, 2019
6 pm
Space 1026
844 North Broad Street
Philedelphia, PA 19130
Alex Da Corte, Blue Pencil Drawing (Big Chill Spook), 2019, Inkjet and White Out on paper, cast polyester resin frame, plexiglass, mat-board, coroplast, wooden strainer, hardware, 17 3⁄16 × 14 13⁄16 inches
Alex Da Corte in The Swiss Institute’s 2019 Benefit Auction
November 10, 2019, 6:30 pm
Angel Orensanz Foundation
172 Norfolk Street
New York, NY 10002 swissinstitute.net
SI Artist Tribute
CHRISTINA FORRER
SI Special Tribute
RUDOLF STINGEL
SI Honoree
ANNABELLE SELLDORF
SI Visionary Award
ANTONIE & PHILIPPE BERTHERAT
and saluting SI’s education partner
THE EDUCATIONAL ALLIANCE SIROVICH CENTER
Creative Direction
RAÚL DE NIEVES
Auction
SIMON DE PURY
Benefit Co-Chairs
Akris, Larry Gagosian, LUMA Foundation, Stiftung Usine
Benefit Co-Hosts
Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, Monique and Max Burger and the TOY Family, Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong, Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, Paula Cooper, Florian Gutzwiller, Hauser & Wirth, Lévy Gorvy, Luhring Augustine, Ricola, Lisa Schiff
Benefit Committee
Sarah Arison, James Keith Brown and Eric Diefenbach, Sadie Coles HQ, Beat Curti, Matthew Dontzin and Elissa Doyle, Eurostruct, Mark Fletcher and Tobias Meyer, Heather Flow, Gladstone Gallery, David Kordansky, Maren Krass, Caroline Lang, Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Pierre-André Maus, Marjorie Mayrock, Susanne von Meiss, Metro Pictures, Melanie Munk, Carolina Nitsch, PIN-UP, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Almine Rech, Thaddaeus Ropac, Melissa Stewart, Clarice O. Tavares, Begum Yasar
Join the Drawing Center on Thursday, September 19 for an evening of music, cocktails, and a silent auction featuring works generously donated by over 40 leading artists.
Participating artists include; Tomma Abts, Richard Aldrich, Noel W Anderson, Kamrooz Aram, Attributed to Arrow (Southern Cheyenne), Tauba Auerbach, Joe Bradley, George Condo, John Currin, Alex Da Corte, Trisha Donnelly, Leonardo Drew, Isa Genzken, John Giorno, Maryam Hoseini, Rashid Johnson, Anna K.E., Brad Kahlhamer, Fernanda Laguna, Bill Lynch, Calvin Marcus, Park McArthur, Hugo McCloud, Troy Michie, Jeanette Mundt, Oscar Murillo, Chris Ofili, Laura Owens, Maia Cruz Palileo, Adam Pendleton, Ronny Quevedo, Jessi Reaves, Ugo Rondinone, Alan Shields, Josh Smith, Cauleen Smith, Rudolf Stingel, Ryan Sullivan, Henry Taylor, Johanna Unzueta, Cecilia Vicuña, Adrián Villar Rojas, Mary Weatherford, Michael Williams, and Matthew Wong.
Da Corte will discuss his reworking of American pop culture as well as his recent contributions to the 57th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh and the 58th La Biennale di Venezia. His most recent solo exhibition was held at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln, Germany (2018). Other recent solo exhibitions include Karma, New York (2018); Secession, Vienna, Austria; Art + Practice, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2016); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2015); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2014, together with Jayson Musson).
Alvin Loving, Septehedron 34, 1970, Acrylic on shaped canvas, 88 5⁄8 × 102 1⁄2 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of William Zierler, Inc. in honor of John I. H. Baur 74.65. Courtesy the Estate of Al Loving and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
Interactions of Color: Alex Da Corte and David Breslin in Conversation Whitney Museum of American Art, Floor 8
Monday, July 1, 7 pm
Join artist Alex Da Corte and David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection and curator of the exhibition Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s, for a conversation about abstraction, color, and optical perception in painting and related media.
Alex Da Corte creates vibrant and immersive large-scale installations that include wall-based works, sculptures, and videos. Colorful and humorous, his work combines personal narrative, art-historical references, pop-culture characters, and the glossy aesthetics of commercial advertising to explore the absurdity and psychological complexity of the images and stories that pervade contemporary American life.
With Ericka Beckman, Scott Benzel, Andrew Cameron, Guendalina Cerruti, Alex da Corte, Charlotte Houette, Karen Kilimnik, Sherrie Levine, Signe Rose, Adam Stamp, and Michael Zahn
Alex Da Corte, Rubber Pencil Devil, 2018, HD Digital video, Runtime: 2 hours, 55 mins, 52 seconds
Alex Da Corte in the 57th edition of the Carnegie International.
Curated by Ingrid Schaffner
October 13, 2018 – March 25, 2019
Carnegie International, 57th Edition
