“Alex Da Corte: Harvest Moon” at the New Museum

Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte (b. 1980, Camden, NJ) will create a new work for the inaugural installation in the storefront window of the New Museum’s 231 Bowery building. Da Corte’s project will be the first in a new series that pays homage to the window installations that the New Museum mounted in the 1980s, which included now-legendary projects by Jeff Koons (“The New,” 1980), David Hammons (“Rented Earth,” 1980), Linda Montano (“Seven Years of Living Art,” 1984–91), and Bruce Nauman (“No, No, No, No, No!,” 1987), among others.

Da Corte’s vibrant paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations infuse everyday artifacts with symbolic power. Drawing from the visual iconography of his outer-Philadelphia upbringing, Da Corte creates theatrical assemblages that combine personal narratives and remixed references with the glossy aesthetics of commercial culture. Through subtle manipulation, repurposing, and juxtaposition of objects and icons, he unearths the eerie and absurd qualities that underlie the seemingly familiar. At once dazzling and ominous, his surreal amalgams chart the psychological complexities, desires, and illusions that haunt late-capitalist culture. “Alex Da Corte: Harvest Moon” is curated by Margot Norton, Curator.