“Da Corte’s feeling for form and color, and his ability to squeeze a nonchalant poetry out of the most banal-seeming objects, is spellbinding.” — Sebastian Smee, The Boston Globe

Jamillah James Presents Alex Da Corte

Marked by a distinctive, acid-bright palette, Philadelphia-based multimedia artist Alex Da Corte’s installations of sculptures, paintings, and videos draw on both the rigors of abstract art and the ruses of commercial design. Owing a debt to the Pop art of the 1960s, Da Corte’s mash-ups mine everyday consumer artifacts for their visual power and libidinous impact, and yet, as Torey Akers has written, “the triumph of “Free Roses” [Da Corte’s MASS MoCA survey] lies not in the artist’s ability to wow his audiences, but in his willingness to call us out on our own false consciousness.” 

Da Corte (b. 1980) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. In 2012, he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Recent solo surveys include  “Free Roses,” at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; “50 Wigs” at the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark; ”A Season in He’ll” at Art + Practice, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (all 2016); and "Die Hexe" at Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, New York (2015). Da Corte’s art can be currently be seen in the group exhibition “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016, ” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Presented by Jamillah James

Jamillah James was recently named Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art). Previously, she was Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, where she organized exhibitions and programs for Art + Practice in Leimert Park. Recent projects include solo presentations of Simone Leigh, Alex Da Corte, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, and the group exhibition A Shape That Stands Up. James has also held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Queens Museum, and independently organized exhibitions and screenings throughout the US and Canada.

Image: A Man Full of Trouble 2016

The Graduate Art Seminar lecture series is a forum for graduate students, members of the ArtCenter community and the general public to enter into dialog with internationally recognized artists, critics, and art historians. The Seminar—coordinated during the Spring term by faculty member Jack Bankowsky—is a core component of ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program.