Pick-up artist

>>Alex Da Corte on opposites, vulnerability
and shooting straight subjects

GLAM SHOT: “Activity #21”

by CHRISTINE REDFERN

Hidden in the Parisian Laundry’s basement, there seems to be some kind of party going on. Photographs, banners and written notes hang on the walls. One banner reads, “I’m like so happy to see you,” while a pair of photographs show two young men in their underwear bouncing on a bed surrounded by balloons and happy faces. Other images show guys who don’t look so happy: more in the spirit of “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” The exhibition I Think About You All the Time is by Philadelphia artist Alex Da Corte, whom the Mirror had a chance to talk to last week.

Mirror: What is the story behind this work?

Alex Da Corte: It all started with my need to speak directly one-on-one with people that I feel are completely opposite from me. Today, we often communicate via text messages or MySpace, but when you text or communicate via e-mail, you miss the emotion.

M: Who is opposite to you?

AD: Heterosexual men. I pick them because I know they will bring out something else in me that will make me feel the most vulnerable. It is important to me to feel as uncomfortable as they might. If they were gay men, I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable; there wouldn’t be that tension in the relationship.

M: How do you meet them?

AD: I approach them in parks, and they come to my studio and we make up different activities. Like, “how many strawberries can you eat?” or the task may be to lift all of my Ikea furniture in one hand. When we do that and take a picture, we feel this sort of triumph. The end point is, you let down your guard and there are a lot of emotions in a small room that brings out this person I wouldn’t know if I just saw him walking by. 

M: What happened with the one who looks beat up?

AD: That was fun; it is jam and berries squished in his eye. The end result is very horrific and violent, but it isn’t the case at all.

M: And the one with glitter on his face?

AD: We were throwing water into the air and he would jump into it. It was a really hot, sticky summer day and we started doing the same thing with glitter and he would run through it. I caught him off guard in that picture, which shows him genuinely repulsed because he is choking on glitter.

I’m interested in how there are these unavoidable stereotypes we put ourselves in or choose to identify with. Any stranger can be a fantasy to you, but when you put them in a situation that looks like a fashion shoot and you make them do something that makes them have an ugly face or puts them in an awkward moment, it breaks down the fantasy and we see the person beneath.

 I Think About You All the Time runs until Feb. 23,
at Parisian Laundry (3550 St-Antoine W.),
info: (514) 989-1056