Purple Art
[March 12 2015]
Alex Da Corte “Die Hexe” exhibition at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York
Luxembourg & Dayan presents Die Hexe, a solo exhibition by Alex Da Corte. For Die Hexe (“The Witch” in German), Da Corte has created a site-specific installation that consumes the gallery’s East 77th Street townhouse, turning it into an implausible cross between a dollhouse and a haunted house. Here visitors will take on a journey through familiar imagery and obscure biographical references that mingle, repeat, trade places, and morph into new provocations that invite reflections upon memory, impulse, the stability of knowledge, and what constitutes value in a work of art.
From the moment they cross the threshold of Luxembourg & Dayan into Die Hexe, visitors will find themselves confronted by a series of vignettes that unfold sequentially like scenes in a movie, proceeding from one gallery space to the next, from one floor to another. These “sets” correspond roughly to the familiar themes and functions of domestic rooms. In each mise en scene along the way, Da Corte has embedded an artwork by another artist who serves him as foil or father figure. Sculptures by Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Bjarne Melgaard, and Haim Steinbach thus appear out of context like unannounced guests, familiar yet estranged. Through Da Corte’s deliberate placement, these iconic works of art – all originally intended by their makers to question modes of presentation, among other things – are subjected to a strange rebirth.
Photo Pola Esther
