Alex Da Corte's art has the ability to transform our impressions of everyday objects like shampoo, fake vegetables, and basketball nets. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that my image of Alex was drastically changed after spending the day with him in Philadelphia. Never would I have expected my day trip down from New York to include margaritas, a trip to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), and a live demonstration of Alex’s superb parallel parking skills.
With a kinship to Arte Povera, a 60s art movement which made use of everyday materials, Alex uses objects we’ve seen hundreds of times but somehow starts with a clean slate. In his "Plastics Paintings" series, he compiled works from his friends and squished them together behind glass panes along with stationary, fabrics, and broken Christmas ornaments, effectively turning the 3D to 2D. Alex's pieces also work the other way around, reifying abstract ideas or images. For "A Season in Hell,” a series based on Rimbaud’s nine part epic poem, Alex created cloth flags printed with modern versions of the people in "The Last Judgment" by Michelangelo (inexplicably, they're dressed as eggs, or rappers).
Alex's studio is set inside an old mint factory recently bought up by two young architects, and remnants of mint making corn syrup drip down out of the pipes and onto the walls and floor. Somehow this seems fitting, as I first discovered his work through his soda paintings on display at PS1 where soda poured onto the floor would dry into semi-transparent organic forms. We talked Rimbaud, his recent participation in Higher Pictures’ The New Beauty of Our Modern Life, and image making in 2014.
Cecilia Salama: The press release for your recent show at Higher Pictures mentioned how it's no longer easy to classify a work as 2D image or 3D object, and how many artists now work as "post-everything practitioners" in a space between sculpture, painting, and digital production. How does this relate to your and other artists' works in the show?
Alex Da Corte: I think that sculpture, now, is undefinable and has been for a really long time. “What is a sculpture?” is the same as asking, “What is an art?” Photography used to have a certain kind of process or technique which meant you are a photographer [because] you to develop film in a certain type of way. Now [with digital technology], it's just image-making. Similarly, a lot of artists in the show use images and photography and don’t really delve into the world of sculpture, but they do think about ways to bend and mutate images to make them grow into something [3D] beyond the frame.
Your work uses a wide range of materials, from Dr. Martens laces to soda to leggings. How do you go about choosing the materials? Where do you find them?
I find these materials everywhere. I am always looking, scavenging, digging––in the supermarkets, the mall, other people’s backyards. I use the materials I don’t understand, [or] the things I don’t like, in hopes that I can change my taste or have no taste. [I'm interested in] a flattening of sentiment, in a sense.
Do you see yourself as reinterpreting existing objects or creating entirely new ones?
I don’t think of time in terms of newness. Time is always happening. I think of it as multi-dimensional. I think about [my w
With a kinship to Arte Povera, a 60s art movement which made use of everyday materials, Alex uses objects we’ve seen hundreds of times but somehow starts with a clean slate. In his "Plastics Paintings" series, he compiled works from his friends and squished them together behind glass panes along with stationary, fabrics, and broken Christmas ornaments, effectively turning the 3D to 2D. Alex's pieces also work the other way around, reifying abstract ideas or images. For "A Season in Hell,” a series based on Rimbaud’s nine part epic poem, Alex created cloth flags printed with modern versions of the people in "The Last Judgment" by Michelangelo (inexplicably, they're dressed as eggs, or rappers).
Alex's studio is set inside an old mint factory recently bought up by two young architects, and remnants of mint making corn syrup drip down out of the pipes and onto the walls and floor. Somehow this seems fitting, as I first discovered his work through his soda paintings on display at PS1 where soda poured onto the floor would dry into semi-transparent organic forms. We talked Rimbaud, his recent participation in Higher Pictures’ The New Beauty of Our Modern Life, and image making in 2014.
Cecilia Salama: The press release for your recent show at Higher Pictures mentioned how it's no longer easy to classify a work as 2D image or 3D object, and how many artists now work as "post-everything practitioners" in a space between sculpture, painting, and digital production. How does this relate to your and other artists' works in the show?
Alex Da Corte: I think that sculpture, now, is undefinable and has been for a really long time. “What is a sculpture?” is the same as asking, “What is an art?” Photography used to have a certain kind of process or technique which meant you are a photographer [because] you to develop film in a certain type of way. Now [with digital technology], it's just image-making. Similarly, a lot of artists in the show use images and photography and don’t really delve into the world of sculpture, but they do think about ways to bend and mutate images to make them grow into something [3D] beyond the frame.
Your work uses a wide range of materials, from Dr. Martens laces to soda to leggings. How do you go about choosing the materials? Where do you find them?
I find these materials everywhere. I am always looking, scavenging, digging––in the supermarkets, the mall, other people’s backyards. I use the materials I don’t understand, [or] the things I don’t like, in hopes that I can change my taste or have no taste. [I'm interested in] a flattening of sentiment, in a sense.
Do you see yourself as reinterpreting existing objects or creating entirely new ones?
I don’t think of time in terms of newness. Time is always happening. I think of it as multi-dimensional. I think about [my w