Malcolm Burnley of Philadelphia Magazine writes about how Alex Da Corte (Easternsports) “put the city’s art scene on the international map”:
“For Da Corte, the decision to stay in Philly was about more than his family ties to South Jersey. ‘It seems that this city allows him to calm down and make the work he needs to make without having to internalize the expectations of galleries and museum directors,’ says Dempewolf, who has known Da Corte for more than a decade. Being able to afford three rooms totaling more than 8,000 square feet, which in Brooklyn might cost something like $100,000 in annual rent, is also pretty sweet.
There’s a reason more than one person uses the word ‘anomaly’ to describe Da Corte’s career. Philly has never been an easy place in which to climb the art-world ladder. ‘In Philadelphia right now, aside from Alex Da Corte, who is actually living off their art?’ says Alex Baker, director of Chinatown’s Fleisher Ollman gallery. Or as Anthony Elms, curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the 2014 co-curator of the Whitney Biennial in Greenwich Village, succinctly puts it: ‘You can become accidentally successful in New York. Not in Philly.’”