ALEX DA CORTE

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alex Da Corte’s videos, installations, sculptures, performances, and collaborations recontextualize pop culture and consumerism. With luscious aesthetics born out of a sophisticated understanding of art history, color, and form, his rich tableaus are grounded in complex human emotions and experiences. Da Corte’s work is imbued with a sincere and kind curiosity about contemporary life and its often constricting and absurd realities.

Alex Da Corte is a Venezuelan-American artist based in Philadelphia. He has been the subject of survey exhibitions in 2022–2023 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, following the 2018 Carnegie International, the 2019 Biennale di Venezia, and the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His collaborations with other celebrated artists and brands include a GAP video with Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and the Prada Galleria handbag with the actress Scarlett Johansson. Alex has written an essay for the Marisol: A Retrospective, the 2023–2025 traveling exhibition of the Venezuelan artist organized by the Buffalo AKG Museum, and in 2026, with the Whitney Museum’s Meg Onli and Scott Rothkopf, will co-curate the first Roy Lichtenstein retrospective in New York in more than 30 years. Da Corte was the 2023 Philip Guston Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

Learn more about Alex and his work in his ART21 video portrait.

ABOUT THE ARTIST TALK

The Glass age

Tuesday, October 17, 2023
5:30 pm MST | Doors Open at 5:00 pm
Mary Harris Auditorium
Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design
1600 Pierce Street, Denver, CO 80214

Watch the recording of the live stream here (on demand through Oct. 24th).

The Glass age

“In 1918, a technique called the Bicheroux Process eliminated long-held limits on the size of a sheet of glass, and with its invention, the Glass Age was born. It has been a period in which we desire through glass, and glass, in turn, has reflected, illuminated, isolated, incubated, and elevated the objects of our desire. Glass did this first in the window displays of the grand shopping arcades of Europe, and it does it now through the screens in our pockets. The object behind the glass grows in power. It is amplified through our passion, and there is no limit to what it can bear. 

The Glass Age is vital
The Glass Age is transparent 
The Glass Age is fragile
The Glass Age is invisible 
The Glass Age is color
The Glass Age is capacity 
The Glass Age cuts
The Glass Age is hot 
The Glass Age absorbs 
The Glass Age reflects 
The Glass Age delays 
The Glass Age holds 
The Glass Age empties 
The Glass Age breathes 
The Glass Age weeps 
The Glass Age protects 
The Glass Age is broken 
The Glass Age is fixed 
But it still looks broken. 
The Glass Age is okay. 
The Glass Age is you, 
Oh wait, no,
The Glass Age is me”

-Alex Da Corte

PRIVATE RMCAD events

STUDENT-LED Q+A SESSION

Wednesday, October 18, 2023
11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Spivak
Lunch is provided
Student-Led Q + A Sessions are casual, in-person conversations open to RMCAD students, faculty, and staff. Guided by student voices, these discussions generate valuable professional advice for all students directly from the student perspective.

ONE-ON-ONES with ALEX DA CORTE

Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Times vary.

RMCAD students have the exciting opportunity to meet one-on-one and share their work with visiting artist Alex Da Corte. This opportunity is available to interested students looking to gain insight and perspective on their own work from this accomplished visiting artist. A limited number of 30-minute meetings are available.

Recommendation List

VASD Program visiting artists provide a recommendation list that gives insight into their work, practice, and research. Artist Alex Da Corte recommends:

Punks: New & Selected Poems - John Keene, 2022
My Life - Lyn Hejinian, 1987
Mount Analogue: A Novel Of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures In Mountain Climbing - René Daumal, 1952
From A Land Where Other People Live - Audre Lorde, 1973
Seven: ... :Sounds - David Wojnarowicz, 1972, republished by Aloes Books, 2017
The Medium Is The Massage: An Inventory of Effects - Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, 1967
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions - Larry Mitchell, 1977
I Am The Beautiful Stranger - Rosalyn Drexler, 1965
The Velvet Rope - Ayanna Dozier, 2020
Grenade in Mouth: Some Poems of Miyo Vestrini, 2019
An Anthology Of New York Poets - Ron Padgett and David Shapiro, editors, 1970
Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons - Hannah Frank, 2019
Sixty Stories - Donald Barthelme, 1981
The Art Of Arranging Flowers: A Complete Guide To Japanese Ikebana – Shozo Sato, 1968
Tiger Beat - Dennis Cooper, 1978
Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black - Cookie Mueller, 1990
The Queen Of Disco – Hit Parade podcast, Chris Molanphy, November 27,2017