Whitney Biennial 2022:  Quiet as It’s Kept

Performance Dates
April 20, May 12, June 3, June 25, July 17, August 8
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Floor 5

Alex Da Corte’s ROY G BIV is both a video installation and an ongoing performance. The video set re-creates a gallery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art—the artist’s hometown museum—that houses sculptures by Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957). Da Corte plays four characters in the video: the artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968); Duchamp’s female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy; Duchamp dressed as the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman; and one of two figures in Brancusi’s sculpture The Kiss (1916), who comes to life via stop-motion animation. The accumulation of color and eventual emancipation of The Kiss is central to this story of love, loss, and transformation.

Da Corte’s cube will be painted a series of single colors by Americo Da Corte, the artist’s brother, a professional housepainter. The performance riffs on John Baldessari’s (1931–2020) video Six Colorful Inside Jobs (1977), for which the artist painted the inside of a room one color per day for six days, and brings the emotional labor and color journey of ROY G BIV into the viewer’s space.