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Open

EXHIBITION

Alex Da Corte Fresh Hell

2023.4.29 (Sat.) -
2023.9.18 (Mon.)

Information

Period :
2023.4.29 (Sat.) - 2023.9.18 (Mon.)
10:00-18:00(until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
Venue :
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Galleries 7-12, 14
Closed:
Mondays (except July 17 and September 18), May 14 and July 18
Admission:
Adults: ¥1,200 (¥1,000)
Students: ¥800 (¥600)
18 and under: ¥400 (¥300)
65 and over: ¥1,000
*Fees in parentheses are for groups of 20 people or more and web tickets
*Tickets also include admission (same day only) to “Collection Exhibition 1 It knows : When Forms Become Mind” (April 8 – November 5).

Purchasing reserved timed-entry tickets:
Time slots:
[1] 10:00~11:00 [2] 11:00~12:00
[3] 12:00~13:00 [4] 13:00~14:00
[5] 14:00~15:00 [6] 15:00~16:00
[7] 16:00~17:00 [8] 17:00~18:00
[9] 18:00~19:00 [10] 19:00~20:00
※ [9][10] Fridays and Saturdays only
For sale: From 10:00 on the 1st of the previous month

Book tickets here (jp)

・The number of reserved tickets sold for each time slot is limited (availability on a first come, first served basis).
・Please present the two-dimensional code screen or printout of the purchased page at the entrance of the exhibition venue.
・Please be aware that there may be an queue at the start of each time slot.
For More Information:
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Phone: +81-76-220-2800
E-Mail: info@kanazawa21.jp

About the Exhibition

Today, life’s every nook and cranny is saturated with visually appealing images. Creators and inventors are constantly thinking about what kinds of images operate on the human psyche and how to visualize the things that normally go unseen: emotions, time, and space. Alex Da Corte is an artist known for works that play with objects and icons that feel familiar to him, deconstructing and reconstructing their original meanings. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including popular and consumer culture, art history and design, sampling the visual culture of America through a variety of media including video, sculpture, painting, and installation. In all of his methods, Da Corte’s attention to vivid color and form is evident, and familiar motifs become dense, graceful assemblages thanks to his extensive knowledge of art history and his subtle and distinctive sensibility. While these works have an allure that draws people in, they also appeal to inexpressible human emotions such as loneliness and anxiety, making people dance in a strange, delusional world outside of the realm of rational organization. This is the first exhibition for Alex Da Corte at an art museum in Asia, and will feature a total of 11 video installations and other works, including recent and never-before-seen pieces. The varied images projected on an overwhelmingly large box-shaped screen frequently appear light, coquettish, and funny, but they also possess a consistently mysterious appeal that plays havoc with one’s mind the more deeply one engages with them. “Fresh Hell” also ventures into the relationship between desire, memory, and perception that has come to define consumer culture in a contemporary society faced with an onslaught of visual information, confronting us with the question of what this inundation of images brings about.

Related Events

Curator-led Gallery Tour
Dates: June 10 (Sat), July 8 (Sat), and September 9 (Sat), 2023
Time: 13:00-13:30
Venue: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa galleries
Reception: In front of the Lecture Hall
Capacity: 20 persons
Language: Japanese only
*Tickets available on the day on a first-come first-served basis
*Please purchase an exhibition ticket in advance.
*Other programs will be posted on the museum website after April 1.

Artist profile

photo by Hedi Slimane
©︎ Alex Da Corte studio

Alex Da Corte

Born in Camden, New Jersey in 1980 and lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Da Corte is a Venezuelan-American artist. His work was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial in New York, the 2019 Venice Biennale and the 2018 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. Past one-person exhibitions include the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Secession in Vienna, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne. Da Corte was selected for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “Mr. Remember,” a solo survey exhibition spanning 20 years of work, opened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark in 2022.

Main works in the exhibition

Alex Da Corte, ROY G BIV, 2022
Installation view: “Alex Da Corte Fresh Hell,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2023
photo: IMAI Tomoki

ROY G BIV, 2022

Gallery 7

The title of this work is a mnemonic phrase consisting of the first letters of each of the words for the seven colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. In an omnibus style, Alex Da Corte, portraying Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), performs the themes of human existence, time, love and separation from lovers, in a place that resembles the famous gallery of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The color of the cube will change seven times over the course of the exhibition.

Alex Da Corte, The Open Window, 2018
© Alex Da Corte studio

The Open Window, 2018

Gallery 9

The images on the pool balls bouncing around the screen come from a novelty contact lens catalog. Musician Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, creates an endurance performance that represents a slow, drawn-out scream — the horrified reaction that a young woman in a horror movie might have when she sees the killer. This image was adapted from the book Cat from Fear Street, a series of horror novels for young adults. The vivid, pop colors contrast beautifully with the icons, and the banal physics of play, the bonk of balls, becomes amplified and tense as it is overlaid over the glacial terror of the lead.

Alex Da Corte, Rubber Pencil Devil, 2019
© Alex Da Corte studio

Rubber Pencil Devil, 2019

Gallery 11

This video work, consisting of 57 chapters and a prologue, is presented in a site-specific exhibition format, projected on a square box by four large rear-projection projectors. The two-hour, forty-minute film is divided into five sections, each inspired by the cultural context of the television era of the 20th century, the memories of those who lived through it, or the icons newly inscribed by the revival, as well as each of their cultural backgrounds. Viewers are prompted to immerse themselves in the oversized and oversaturated compositions of everyday objects, household symbols, and familiar codes. One of the performers is Da Corte himself, who performs the “essence” of these figures, attempting to harness the 20th century by taking on iconic characters such as the Pink Panther, Sylvester the Cat, Mister Rogers, and the Devil.

Alex Da Corte, Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear), 2022
Installation view: “Alex Da Corte Fresh Hell,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2023
photo: IMAI Tomoki

Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear), 2022

Gallery 14

The Mouse Museum was created by Claes Oldenburg (1929–2022) between 1965 and the late 1970s as a museum for his own small artworks and collected objects in the form of a casual representation of Mickey Mouse, the most famous icon in the world, created by Walt Disney. The work was presented at documenta 5 in 1972 (Kassel/Hesse, former West Germany, now the Federal Republic of Germany). Da Corte’s version, comprising props from his films, small sculptures, maquettes, studies, gifts, and ephemera, are a testament to Da Corte’s eye, life, and practice.

Alex Da Corte, THE SUPERMAN, 2018
© Alex Da Corte studio

TH∃ SUP∃RMAN, 2018

Around Gallery 14

A few years ago, a friend sent Alex Da Corte an image of him in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum in Paris; which was actually a depiction of the American rapper Eminem. Based on the similarities in appearance recognized in the two different figures, this work asks the question: what constitutes the public perception of a world-famous musician, what kind of mass psychology is at work, and how does he behave in his private environment?

Images

    Installation view: “Alex Da Corte Fresh Hell,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2023
    photo: IMAI Tomoki

    Alex Da Corte, Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear), 2022
    Installation view: “Alex Da Corte Fresh Hell,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2023
    photo: IMAI Tomoki

    Alex Da Corte, Rubber Pencil Devil, 2019
    Collection of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
    © Alex Da Corte studio

    Alex Da Corte, Rubber Pencil Devil, 2019
    © Alex Da Corte studio

    Alex Da Corte, Rubber Pencil Devil, 2019
    © Alex Da Corte studio

    Alex Da Corte, ROY G BIV, 2022
    © Alex Da Corte studio

    Reference Image:
    Claes Oldenburg, Exterior of Mouse Museum,
    1972-77

Organizers

Organized by:
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Kanazawa Art Promotion and Development Foundation)
Patronized by:
U.S. Consulate General Osaka-Kobe, THE HOKKOKU SHIMBUN
In Cooperation with:
Tama Art University (Information Design, Art and Media Course), Kawasaki City Museum, Hyatt Centric Kanazawa, MODERNIS & COMPANY, Inc.