Prada presents “Rubber Pencil Devil”, a site-specific intervention by the artist Alex Da Corte, with the support of Fondazione Prada. The exhibition was on view from 13 November 2020 to 10 January 2021 in the premises of Prada Rong Zhai, in Shanghai.
In video format, the project has 57 chapters displayed in 20 large multicolored video cubes organized by the two main floors of Prada Rong Zhai.
The American artist’s kaleidoscopic film is inspired by a wide range of iconographic and cultural sources, from vintage television images to 20th-century animation.
Don’t be surprised if you run into familiar faces like Sylvester the Cat, Mister Rogers, and characters from Sesame Street, even the McDonald’s Happy Meal container has an appearance. Interpreted by the artist himself, these figures are depicted in unconventional ways, with the aim of exploring themes of alienation and human desire.
Da Corte describes “Rubber Pencil Devil” as a total work of art, an immersive experience combining video, music and architecture, rich in allusions to avant-garde visual artists, experimental writers, pop singers, showbiz personalities and cartoon characters.
Alex Da Corte conceived a vividly colored exhibition, manipulating and redirecting consumer culture and art history. Their intellectually provocative and exuberant fantasies and ideas provide not only a critical view of contemporary reality but also try to reintroduce normative systems of power into society and the possibility of creating “new ideas and new beginnings”.
“Being a creator or inventor of things, you have to be kind of willing to go to a place of delusion” said Alex Da Corte.
“Going beyond an image or breaking through the screen and really touching what’s on the screen” was his goal and this project is proof of his achievement.
Courtesy Prada
