As part of Art Basel Paris’s 2025 Public Program, Venezuelan-American artist Alex Da Corte will present his large-scale, inflatable sculpture of Kermit the Frog at Place Vendôme from 20-26 October. 

Alex Da Corte transforms the familiar language of popular culture into vivid, emotionally layered works. In this piece, he revisits an incident from the 1991 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, when an enormous, helium-filled balloon in the shape of Kermit the Frog snagged on a tree branch, tore open, and slumped half-deflated along Fifth Avenue. While the parade marched on, Kermit’s fall drastically affected the mood of the celebration. Recreated here as an inflatable sculpture, Da Corte’s Kermit appears suspended in a never-ending moment of defeat. Between humor and melancholy, the piece embodies the artist’s interest in how cultural icons absorb and reveal our collective anxieties.