Enrico Corte

Enrico Corte (Italian: [enˈriːko ˈkorte]; born 21 June 1963) is an Italian contemporary artist. He works in the fields of painting, sculpture, drawing, video art and photography. His exhibitions often include multimedia installations that mix diverse genres and form relationships both with the surrounding area and the viewing public by means of ever-changing combinations. He has lived for extended periods of time in Rome, London, Berlin, Paris and New York, always immersing himself in the contemporary culture and assimilating the tensions of the metropolitan counter-cultures. His works can be found in both private and public collections in Europe and the USA.

Some recurring themes constitute the artist’s poetic core. One element is the so-called "impossibility of the Tragic" within the system of contemporary art. Another theme is the co-existence of creation and destruction in the process of realizing a work, along with the analysis of the “dark side” of creativity which often coincides with the self-destruction of the artist’s personality. A frequent theme found in many of Corte’s works is the relationship between official artistic culture and the “underground” ferment that develops in urban alternative countercultures or subcultures. The manifold theme of sex in general and, in particular, the relationship between pleasure and pain, are explored by Corte without restraint or prejudice; he himself ties the wide variety of artistic techniques and genres of his work to a genderqueer standpoint experienced personally by the artist.