Signed, limited edition artwork by Alex Da Corte for MASS MoCA

Artist Alex Da Corte has created 31 swan luminaries for MASS MoCA’s annual benefit in New York on October 25, 2016. These signed, limited edition pieces will grace the tables at the gala and are available for pre-sale to benefit the museum. This is the third year the museum has commissioned an artist to design a centerpiece.

Fashioned from an altered plastic garden planter and an artificial candle, Da Corte’s centerpieces resemble two swans that are currently featured in Free Roses, the artist’s sprawling, color-infused survey show at MASS MoCA, which has been met with great enthusiasm by press, public, collectors, and curators alike. Part of a large new installation titled Lightning, the pair of swans circle endlessly in a shallow pink pond, their necks craned backward in an effort to see their mate

“The immersive world the exhibition creates,” wrote Randy Kennedy of The New York Times, “can seem Wonka-ish, candy-colored and animated, with deranged elements like mirror-striped floors, flying bats, plastic fruits and vegetables, a giant hoagie made of rubber, and a sculptural rendition of the couch in The Simpsons. But Mr. Da Corte, who has become highly sought-after in recent years for a riotous post-post-Pop sensibility significantly darkens the picture around the corner from the romantic swans… in a work inspired by Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell.”

The Boston Globe added: “Da Corte’s work may be rooted in mass consumer culture, but it is filtered through French Symbolist poetry, modern and contemporary art, and above all, perhaps, Catholicism, with its flair for ritual and theatrics, and its incorrigible eagerness to propose one thing as another.”

Born in 1980 in Camden, New Jersey, Da Corte spent his youth between New Jersey and Caracas, Venezuela. He earned a BFA in printmaking from the University of Arts, Philadelphia, and an MFA from Yale. Currently, he lives and works in Philadelphia. He has had solo exhibitions at the Art + Practice/Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (with Jayson Musson); and the ICA at MECA, Portland. His work has been in group exhibitions at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; and will be on view at the Whitney this fall. His show at MASS MoCA is on view until January 16, 2017.

Each swan luminary is $1,500; a pair is $2,500. (Dimensions are 24″ high × 17″ long × 8.5″ wide. Price does not include shipping.) If you are interested in purchasing, please contact Rebecca Wehry at rwehry@massmoca.org or 413.664.4481 x8157.