Designer detritus: artist Alex Da Corte makes the everyday extraordinary
Wallpaper* reviews the Hammer's Offsite exhibition, "Alex Da Corte: A Season in Hell"
According to Wallpaper*, the Hammer's latest off-site exhibition at Art+Practice is "an investigation into the way we filter and apply images and their effect on our psyche."
"What do we want from the stuff we use, and what do we feel when we use it? From dollar store soda, shampoo, IKEA furniture and hair rollers to flour, dirt and plastic food stuffs, Alex Da Corte’s materials are the commonplace detritus of the everyday, and deliberately so. In his searingly colourful videos, paintings, installations or sculptures, the Philadelphia-based artist finds poetry in consumer culture and theatricality in the suburban.
At a solo exhibition opening on 9 July in Los Angeles, Da Corte brings his 360-degree practice to the Hammer Museum, with a new, site-specific multimedia installation, incorporating a survey of recent video work. (Well, almost – it's being presented off-site, at LA's Art + Practice.) This is Da Corte’s second solo exhibition with a US museum this year; his solo at MASS MoCA – 'Free Roses', running until January 2017 – includes a dazzling, 100ft, carefully-constructed installation that speaks of the artist’s interest in sets, stages and surfaces. 'A Season in He’ll' (the title a reference to Arthur Rimbaud’s poem 'A Season in Hell', the inspiration behind a series of works) continues Da Corte’s investigations into the intersection of the visual with the psychological."— CHARLOTTE JANSEN, July 8, 2016
Read the full article at the Wallpaper* website.