Alex Da Corte in “Everyday Icons” - Season 11 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[Man VO] Let there be light.

He can't hide, try as he might.

♪♪♪

A man at night making a pathetic
attempt at connection...

[spraying]

to connect with
anyone in an empty room.

Have you ever danced with the
devil in the pale moonlight?

♪♪♪

Here is the man.

Here is the man.

Here is the man.

I've seen the man perform.

I've seen the man try and hide.

[man] Okay, ready to roll?

[woman] You can stand
up straight, Alex.

[Alex] Yeah, is it okay?

-[woman] Yeah.
-[woman] Yeah, that's fine.

-[woman] We could reach you.
-[woman] We can reach.

[Alex] Okay.

[woman] It was just for the
top of your head I needed...

[Alex] Okay.

♪ curious jazzy music ♪

[Alex VO] These characters or
images or objects exist within a

world of dreams.

♪ curious electronic music ♪

I just want to have my mind
be freer than it is and

that doesn't come easy to me,
so to spend time with these

characters in this devotional
research-based way is to say,

"I don't know if
I'll ever change,

but I try to, at least."

There is distance between myself
and the people in the past who

have influenced me.

If I think of some kind
of icon as a flat symbol,

how do I give it depth?

I want that, I think, of the
people I admire or the people

that confuse me.

I want depth.

[Alex] There we go.

Uh, wait, but is it all
the way up on the shoulder?

[man] Yes.

[Alex VO] I had a kind of very
long and winding path to be an artist.

I was a young person in my early
20s and studying animation,

and I didn't know how to go
forward to-- if I wanted to make

sculpture, I just
didn't know how to proceed.

All of the people making
sculpture were using the wood

shop or the metal shop, and
those places did not feel safe

for a young gay guy.

Like, I didn't know how
to find myself there.

When I was sort of feeling like
I was at an impasse and kind of

had...

had some time to think about how
I wanted to make a sculpture,

I looked to my
grandmother and started sewing.

In particular, I made
this large ketchup bottle.

♪ dreamy ambient music ♪

I filmed myself performing
this thing where I replicated a

photograph of Claes Oldenburg
carrying a toothpaste bottle

down the street but this
was a large ketchup bottle,

and I walked through the streets
of Philadelphia with this big

ketchup bottle.

And that was my sort of first
entry into sculpture and also

sewing as this kind of powerful
act of finding yourself.

♪♪♪

This idea of
embracing these things,

softening these things that seem
to be hard is my way of taking

down that machismo
a notch and to say, like,

"There's room
for a gentler,

more tender way of understanding
what it means to be human."

♪♪♪

Everyone I work with is doing
the same thing and wanting the

same thing of their lives.

There's a whole community of
people working towards something

new and unknown.

None of us know what
this will be in the end,

and that, I think, is-- that's
why we all come to the studio

every day is, like, to just
get into what we don't know.

We'll just see how
far this gets us.

♪♪♪

Yeah, I mean this
will change tomorrow,

but that's...

what we want.

♪♪♪

So this is a remake of
Claes Oldenburg's Mouse Museum,

and it's a work that he
initially made for Documenta.

I remember, like, wanting
to just be around stuff,

small plastic objects.

My room growing up
probably had just, like,

lots of buckets of this
kinds of stuff that I would

collect.

And I have sort of amassed
all of my objects and small

sculptures that I've made and
things that are important to me,

things that just kind of made
up my sculptural vocabulary,

but in miniature.

This little Big Bird mockup,
this was sort of the genesis of

the work for The Met.

[Alex VO] My work, when I'm
replicating something,

doesn't end with
replica, 'cause for me,

it's also important to collage
what has been replicated and put

it into a new world.

♪ uplifting ethereal music ♪

It allows for those characters
or images or objects to exist

within a world where logic is
kind of reinvented or paused or

slowed down or reversed,
and what we think we know

and how we think things
should be is now undone.

I guess at an early age, when I
said I wanted to be an artist,

I just thought that was
making Disney drawings.

I wanted to participate in the
magical world that that space

allowed me to exist in.

I grew up in the suburbs
of Jersey and Pittsburgh,

and I grew up in
Caracas, Venezuela.

As a young person, when
you move around a lot,

it can be unsettling, and so
I think that's kind of how I

became a dreamer --

because I was living in a
place and then leaving the

place, and then you long for
the place that you were living.

You kind of live in some sort
of space that's not actually

underfoot but quite
far away in your mind.

♪♪♪

The homes I'm making,
they're very fragmented.

They're collages of many
places and many versions,

I think, of myself.

♪♪♪

How does one look forward and
then also understand the past

and where they came from?

I have always come to this
particular gallery for this

Brancusi.

How I have always understood
Brancusi was this notion that,

like, the sculpture --

from the top
to the ground --

is all one.

Your foundation or what might be
a pedestal is actually part of

the work, and as
I interpret that,

our roots and our history
matters as much as what is

present or what we see or
what is visible at the top.

And so then I think, again,
about this work and how to

respond to it or unravel it.

I think that's often what I want
when I spend time with these

works is to say, "It
worked for you then,

but how can it work for me now?

And let's hug it out."

♪♪♪

[figure in video]
When I saw you...

and that girl talking…

♪♪♪

[Scott] All right,
let's go ahead and roll.

All right, ready?

And...

action.

[Alex] So we could cut to some
kind of version of that.

[Scott] Oh yeah, we
can use a piece of it.

Do you wanna do it
again or move on?

[Alex] Let's do one more.

[Scott] Okay, cool.

♪ soft piano music ♪

Today, Alex is shooting this
sequence of the film in which

Marcel Duchamp gets dressed
into drag as Rrose Sélavy,

which is a fictional persona
that Duchamp came up with,

and he's going to be performing
a song under a pink spotlight.

[Alex VO] You know, my parents
pulled me aside and said,

"Well, what does it mean?" [chuckles]

They were like, "Why ketchup
and why these characters?"

And I was like, "These
are my safe spaces."

And as strange as
my ideas may be,

to make sure that they still can
communicate some sort of kernel

of what it means to be human,
that's what matters to me;

that's, like, the driving force
of why I work and how I work,

I think.

[Rrose Selavy] [in robotic voice]
♪ Why do birds ♪

♪ Suddenly appear ♪

[applause]

♪ Every time ♪

♪ That you're near? ♪

♪ Ooh-wee baby ♪

♪ Just like me ♪

♪ They long to be... ♪

[Alex VO] Walking the line
between the person that you

really are and the person that
you long to be or the person

that you once were,

we are constantly negotiating and
renegotiating those things to be,

you know, the perfect human.

I don't know if I'll
ever fully understand it,

but I know that one puts things
into the world because they want

to ask questions, and I
hope I learn something new.

♪♪♪

♪ And that is why ♪

♪ soft uplifting music ♪