The act of creating a home filled with objects and the memories they invoke is familiar territory. But an art installation in an Upper East Side townhouse pushes against the idea of comfort in domestic life.
Venezuelan American artist Alex Da Corte took over the whole building at Luxembourg & Dayan gallery. It took Da Corte six weeks to complete the installation, called “Die Hexe” or "The Witch" in German. Visitors start in a candle-lit, dark room with a purple glow coming in from outside. It's cold. There are baskets hanging on the wall, and doors with things above and inside them.
“I think I just wanted to understand what makes a haunted house,” said Da Corte. “As you travel through this house, or what I was imagining to do, would be to re-define where we locate fear or things that are haunted.”
Da Corte was inspired by past tenants of the townhouse on 64 East 77th street, who included the members of the 1960s band The Mamas and The Papas. He wanted to explore sentimentality and memory.
“Memory has a way of collapsing in on itself and we absorb experiences of others, whether we've lived them or not,” he said.
The first room on the second floor is covered with pink wallpaper. A rocking chair, which moves by itself, stands next to a rug, curtains and a wooden stool.
“This is a replica of the only piece of furniture that was in Kurt Cobain's room in which he died,” said Da Corte.
The mood changes completely in the third room: colorful neon lights glow over a large classical French painting; a sculpture of a woman on all fours serves as a coffee table; there is a stripper pole with a telephone dancing on it. "This space makes me think about sex, it makes me think about power," said Da Corte.
The house is full of hidden secrets. Under the rug, or between the paprika and the cinnamon in the pantry, you might recognize pieces by famous artists. "We have this Haim Steinbach work casually existing and coalescing with the works I've made, which are in the exact same way he does, but you know, living different lives," he said.
Both Da Corte’s grandparents worked in food retail – one started the first large supermarket chain in Venezuela, the other was a stocker in a grocery store – and food and scent plays a large role in his work. Da Corte moved to the U.S. when he was 8, and he is now based in Philadelphia.
"I think I noticed growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, that there was a real division of class between low and high, and just like in the art world, there is a real shift sometimes between the value of things," said Da Corte.
The last room is made of mirrors, it has a cadaver drawer with a tray of green liquid inside and it smells of mint. The piece ends with a green curtain, which you might recognize from a famous movie, or not. As Da Corte said, people don't need to get his associations. "It's very still in here, and maybe this is a great space to think about all the things I have and have lost and gotten rid of now that I am free," he said.
Hint: The green curtain has to do with a wizard.
