“BLEACH”
Opening Reception: Friday, November 11, 6-8PM
Work by Paul DeMuro & Alex Da Corte
Nirvana released their debut album Bleach in 1989, with a black and white photographic negative for the cover art, and songs that were intensely negative in mood and lyric. Twenty-two years later America is in the midst of a serious downer, and Jolie Laide’s final exhibition seems an appropriate opportunity to consider the nature of negativity. Paul DeMuro developed the palette for his recent paintings by taking photographic negatives of his earlier works, arriving at acidic greens and yellows in counterpoint to black, white,
and gray. Alex Da Corte has given his sculptures glossy and shiny surfaces, with silvers and chromes set against nocturnal blues, purples and blacks. Da Corte positions his work in the gallery to both observe and reflect DeMuro’s, urging the sculptures and paintings to function as conceptual negatives of one another.
In a 1993 interview for Spin, Cobain said he "didn't give a flying fuck what the lyrics were about" on Bleach, suggesting that the particular messages were less important than the music’s direct tone of frustration and anger. There is a kind of bluntness in DeMuro’s use of the negative to set his palette, and in his simple hand-forms and gradient motifs. Similarly, Da Corte’s use of the plastic guitars from the popular game Guitar Hero deploys a heavy hand to grab cultural phenomena as Duchampian readymades. DeMuro and Da Corte demonstrate that the content of a specific idea, whether it’s a “negative palette” or an unadulterated pop-culture reference, may be less important than how it’s used to generate a larger experience. The experience of Jolie Laide since opening in July 2010 has been larger than the sum of its parts, and the gallery is exceedingly proud to present Bleach as its final exhibit.
Paul DeMuro (b.1981) was raised in Philadelphia. He grew up Catholic in a row house by four different cemeteries, and received his MFA in Painting from Rutgers University in 2010. DeMuro currently lives in Brooklyn and has recently been included in group exhibitions at Jolie Laide, Columbia University, Harlem Workspace Gallery, and Lauren Luloff’s loft. He currently holds a Chashama studio residency in New York.
Alex Da Corte (b.1981) lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He received his MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2010. Da Corte has shown widely in the US and abroad, most recently in the ICA Philadelphia, as part of “How We Escaped: Reflections on Warhol.” His work has also been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, PS1 MoMA, TEAM Gallery, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, and Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York, Or Gallery in Vancouver, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Fleisher Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Galerie Olivier Robert in Paris.
Showing until December 16
Gallery is now accessible by appointment only, Monday through Friday- email Yyoon@saaw.com or sstewart@saaw.com to schedule