“The discontented man finds no easy chair.”
– Benjamin Franklin –Poor Richard’s Almanack 1732-1758

Maccarone is pleased to present A Man Full of Trouble, the gallery’s first exhibition with Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte.

Da Corte’s current exhibition takes its name from the Pre-Revolutionary war tavern that stands in the heart of Philadelphia’s historic district. Using the “privy”, an archeological and scatological pit located near the “A Man Full of Trouble” tavern, as inspiration, Da Corte presents the world within such a portal; a place where memories, objects, past, and present aggregate and reconstitute.

Collapsing the space between the psychological iconography of his outer Philadelphia upbringing and the cultural touchstones often used to define those suburban boundaries, Da Corte transforms 630 Greenwich Street’s exhibition space with a menagerie of interrelated sculptures staged atop a carpet depicting a cinematic moment of foiled discovery, begging the existential questions of the difference between chasing fantasy and chasing delusion.

Several works in Da Corte’s tableau feature replicas or retooled iconographic components of Philadelphia’s culture and history: John Cram’s fan chair, William Penn’s likeness on the Quaker Oats container, local business murals, or the ever-present inventions and avuncular presence of Benjamin Franklin. Other works are poetically staged amalgams of the familiar and the absurd interwoven with personal narratives of love, loss, success, and escapism, providing a kaleidoscopic portrait of the artist and his city.

Alex Da Corte was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1980. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. His survey exhibition “Free Roses” is currently on view at MASS MoCA, North Adams. Other recent solo exhibitions include “50 Wigs” at the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, DK; ”A Season in He’ll” at Art + Practice, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (both 2016); “Die Hexe” at Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, New York (2015); “Easternsports” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2014, together with Jayson Musson). Da Corte’s work will also be included in the group exhibition “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Opening Oct. 28, 2016). Past group exhibitions include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, DK; the 13th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, FR; The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL; among many others. In 2012, Da Corte was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.