Alex De Corte: The Whale | The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

"The exhibition’s title, The Whale, illustrates the artist’s vast mining of contemporary culture, a process that Da Corte describes as “analogous to the Jungian night sea journey, looking backward and collecting the past as an act of commingling with spirits, either cultural or personal.” This concept, drawn from the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, relates to myths in which the hero is devoured by a sea monster—a whale—and descends into a land of ghosts, e.g. Hades, or Hell, in the quest for individuality. Da Corte sees the medium of painting as “a cavity for these ghosts”—much like museums themselves. Painting, forever brimming with the weight of its own history and historically itself an uncanny threshold of consumption, represents “the mouth of the whale” to Da Corte. The artist situates himself here, within a crowded, beautiful trash-scape of contemporary culture, digesting advertisements, animation cels, compact disc graphic design, art history, and more. The ephemeral pop culture source materials referenced in Da Corte’s paintings make evident how the things we identify with—or use to define us—evolve over time." - The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Exhibition Dates: March 2, 2025 - September 7, 2025

Location: 3200 Darnell Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76107

See The Modern for more information.