Conceived in 2022 for the Whitney Biennial, Alex Da Corte’s ROY G BIV is both a video installation and an ongoing performance. The video set recreates a gallery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art that houses sculptures by Constantin Brancusi.

Da Corte plays four characters in the video: the artist Marcel Duchamp in practical black and white; Duchamp’s female alter ego, Rose Sélavy in practical shades of pink; Duchamp dressed as the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman; and one of the two figures in Brancusi’s sculpture The Kiss(1916), who comes to life first through stop-motion claymation and then via special effects and prosthetics.

The accumulation of color and eventual emancipation of The Kiss is central to this story of love, loss, and transformation.

The cubical structure onto which Da Corte’s video is projected is painted a series of colors over the course of the exhibition by a professional housepainter.

The performance riffs on John Baldessari’s video Six Colorful Inside Jobs (1977), for which the artist painted the inside of a room one color per day for six days, and brings the emotional labor and color journey of ROY G BIV into the viewer’s space.

Costume Designers - Carolyn Anello and Gwendy Smith

Movement Director / Choreographer - Gwendy Smith