Wednesday, December 14, 2016

A Man Full of Trouble

by Drew Martin
I was walking around taking pictures of Alex Da Corte's show A Man Full of Trouble at Maccarone this afternoon when the gallery assistant said, "You know we have professional pictures of the show already, right?" Perhaps he felt bad seeing me in the contorted positions I assumed to get certain shots. He did say it as if he wanted to help me...or better yet, to relieve me of my own efforts. I said, "Yeah, but I am trying to get pictures like this." And I showed him the following photo on my camera display.


He was a little surprised that I showed this particular shot to him because it seems like the least significant piece in the show. He said, "Oh yeah. That's actually the artist's favorite piece here. In fact, it was the inspiration for the rest of the show."

There are some really interesting pieces such as this free-form neon light sculpture.




And because I start off every morning with a bowl of cooked oats, I immediately gravitated to a tall sculpture with an over-sized replica of a Quaker Oats container. I did not pick up on the reference of this and the stack of $100 Ben Franklin towels to Da Corte's hometown - Philadelphia.





One of my favorite pieces is this pair of Kit Cat Clocks because in a span of almost 30 seconds their pendular tails seem to be matched for about five seconds before they fall back out of synchronicity.


 Here are a few more pictures I took of the show: