Alex Da Corte: Hotdog With Ketchup

Alex Da Corte's _Hot Dog with Ketchup_ (2026) turns a familiar picture into an unruly encounter. Beginning with a printout of Roy Lichtenstein's painting _Hot Dog_ (1963), Da Corte paints ketchup across its surface in a loose, bodily sweep. The gesture is irreverent, but it also summons the drama of Jackson Pollock's action painting, bringing Pop's cool commercial image into contact with the heroic mark of Abstract Expressionism. In Da Corte's hands, art history is not preserved at a distance but drawn into the realm of appetite, desire, and play. This kind of collision is central to his practice, where familiar icons are made strange through acts of theatrical transformation. _Hot Dog with Ketchup_ is a reproduction made messy, and unsettled, by touch. Lichtenstein himself returned to the topic in _Hot Dog with Mustard_ and related works from 1963–64, making the subject a small but vivid part of his Pop vocabulary. Made partially in response to the hot dog vendors across the street, Da Corte's version offers site-specific recognition of the vendors themselves, carrying this art historical exchange back into the public life of the street. This billboard is created in conjunction with _Roy Lichtenstein: Like New_, on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 11, 2026 and co-curated by Da Corte and Meg Onli, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator. This project is made possible by the Whitney Museum of American Art, TF Cornerstone, and the High Line. _Alex Da Corte: Hotdog With Ketchup_ is part of Outside of the Box programming, which is supported by a generous endowment from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.