Alex Da Corte's Mirror Marilyn explores Warhol's iconic artwork, viewing the print in reverse order. (Photo by Courtney Dabney)
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The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth opened its newest exhibition on Sunday, March 2, and artist Alex Da Corte was on hand for a media preview on February 27, unfolding the vibrant array of his collection for The Whale.
The exhibition encompasses some forty paintings, drawings, mixed-media works, including “a video that considers painting as a performative act.”
Alex Da Corte: The Whale will be on view from March 2 through September 7.
“Da Corte is globally recognized for his hybrid installations marrying painting, performance, video, and sculpture,” The Modern says. “Immersed in the history of art, design, and pop culture, Da Corte’s combinations evoke mixed feelings, such as fantasy and malice, while crossing hierarchies of high and low culture.”
“I was taken by what art looked like in such a space,” Da Corte says of seeing his pieces installed at The Modern. “I’ve been given the opportunity to fold my art into other artworks of the museum.”
In the initial rooms of the new exhibit, you’ll see Da Corte’s work interspersed with other masterpieces from The Modern’s permanent collection ― ones that regular visitors will instantly recognize.
The exhibition’s title, The Whale, is “drawn from the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung” and his exploration of the Biblical prophet Jonah and his experience of being consumed and spat out by a whale ― the belly of the whale became a metaphor for Jung’s psychoanalysis. Just as Jung looks at the familiar story with fresh eyes, Alex Da Corte puts his spin on many iconic images, inviting the viewer to explore them anew.
“The most righteous body is a sponge … it’s a measure of balance,” as to what it chooses to absorb and what it pushes out, he explains.
That is the way the artist wants visitors to approach this exhibit ― like a sponge. Interaction with the art is at the forefront of Da Corte’s mind ― how viewers interact with it and digest it. He doesn’t want you to be a passive viewer.
“Moving through any space ― be it a museum or a gas station ― you can come out changed,” Alex Da Corte says.
Visitors to The Whale will be challenged to interact with familiar images in a new way. His work is that of deconstructing icons. Reconfiguring and reimagining “contemporary culture, digesting advertisements, animation cels, compact disc graphic design, art history, and more,” according to The Modern.
The Wicked Witch of the East becomes your bartender in Haymaker. A serene still life of a vase filled with flowers is struck by lightning, rocking the vase, the flowers spilling out of the frame in The Lighting Strike. The Anvil takes the familiar and destructive force that had Looney Tunes fans seeing stars and birdies overhead to a much softer space ― becoming one of his “Puffy Paintings” made of neoprene and foam. And, his Mirror Marilyn repositions Warhol’s most famous print, layering the print in reverse order.
What’s more iconic than Warhol’s Marilyn prints? After all, “Christie’s Spring Marquee Week of sales (in May of 2022) began with the momentous sale of Shot Sage Blue Marilyn by Andy Warhol, selling for $195 million, establishing it as the most expensive 20th century artwork to sell at auction.”
“When you spend as much time thinking about icons as I do, you learn to love them.”
The artist says he wanted to be an animator early on. “The animator’s job is to copy … when I started replicating, I wanted to do it without respect, without Sinicism.”
“My paintings have always been behind glass,” Da Corte explains. He wants the viewer’s reflection in the glass to become part of their experience. The viewer actually becomes a part of the artwork in that respect.
These are “reverse-glass paintings, in which the artist employs a process often used in animated celluloids and sign-making,” according to a release. “Da Corte creates the image in reverse order, applying the front-most layer of paint to the back side of the glass and building up subsequent layers, with the background added last.”
“The exhibition incorporates Puffy Paintings in stuffed, upholstered neoprene, Shampoo Paintings comprised of drugstore hair products, and sculptural Slatwall Paintings, where found objects protrude from the slatted grooves found in everyday commercial displays,” The Modern explains.
Bold, even cartoonish, works are softened and upholstered ― becoming tactile, bigger-than-life icons, like The Anvil.
“I’m a quilter, my grandmother was a quilter,” Da Corte explains. “Many of my early works were sewn. I wanted to give power to things that might otherwise seem frivolous.”
His love of art history is a longing to engage with the makers and creators. Da Corte says he is interested in “locating the maker” in everything.
He’s fascinated even by the mistakes in the crafting of artworks and their elaborate frames, as they prove a human touch. So, pay special attention to finding the maker’s mark in his pieces as you tour The Whale.
