With his agile hands and childish eyes, Danny Cortes recreates urban scenarios in miniature, imbued with the hip-hop culture of New York. A hobby in the beginning, which has become a source of success among rappers – up to the Sotheby’s auction house.
“We never stop being children (…) Who doesn’t like toys? Who doesn’t like miniatures?” smiles the 42-year-old artist, sitting among recycled objects of all kinds, in his studio in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood. On his table, a work in progress, a replica of a faded and dirty brick facade. Near the bricked-up windows hangs a plastic crate that serves as a basketball hoop.
“It represents my childhood (…) everything seemed like this, abandoned, empty”, “(there was) a lot of drugs in the neighbourhood”, he describes, working with his material, polystyrene. Among his other recent creations, a modest Chinese restaurant with a damaged yellow sign and mauve and red brick walls dotted with graffiti.
In front of the establishment – the real one – Danny Cortes, with a cap on his round face and black jacket, is still smiling as he says that the New York rapper Joell Ortiz, who grew up nearby, absolutely wanted to afford it. The price? “$10,000,” Danny Cortes replies. “The first coin I sold was $30 and I was so happy,” he recalls.
The artist creates collectibles from the most ordinary urban environments, “those little things that we pass by every day”, which we end up forgetting, but which make up the landscape of the megalopolis.
One of his first signatures is a simple ice cube refrigerator, a white piece of furniture barred with the letters “ICE” found on the sidewalks of many grocery stores, most often covered in graffiti, stickers and posters, which he meticulously reproduces with a brush. .
His repertoire also includes the ice cream van, which can be seen in Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing” (1989) and whose bell ringing is still familiar to young New Yorkers. Typical images nourished by nostalgia on which he adds the effigies of legendary local rappers, such as Notorious BIG or the Wu-Tang Clan.
Danny Cortes wasn’t always an artist. But the pandemic changed his life, prompting him to make a more assiduous activity out of a hobby, he who had chained trades in buying and selling, in construction, or in a homeless shelter.
When he exhibited his first creations on social networks, “it just took off,” he sums up. The art label Mass Appeal, of which rap legend Nas is a figure, commissioned him to design a ghetto-blaster for the cover of a mini-album by DJ Premier (“Hip Hop 50: Vol 1”).
Last March, four of his works also ended up in a “hip hop” auction at Sotheby’s, including an ice cream truck that fetched $2,200.
“He really knows how to capture that dark, gritty vibe that 90s hip-hop was born into in New York,” commends Monica Lynch, former president of the Tommy Boy Records label and consultant on this sale.
Through his work, Danny Cortes also wants to “document” a space “in continuous transformation”, in particular his Bushwick neighborhood, today a trendy meeting place for artists and a symbol of a gentrification he does not regret.
“I think it’s good, it’s safer. Even though Bushwick will always be Bushwick, there are more opportunities,” he said. His art is not limited to Brooklyn. He also made a miniature replica of an Atlanta restaurant for its owner, rapper 2 Chainz.
AFP extension
