Broken Homes

Momenta Art is pleased to present Broken Homes, a group show featuring work by Francis Cape, Kate Gilmore, Lisa Kirk, Marni Kotak, Anthony Marchetti, Gordon Matta-Clark, Kirsten Nelson, Leah Oates, Naomi Safran-Hon and Peter Scott.

The exhibition Broken Homes presents physical and metaphorical ruptures in domestic spaces. Some of the work in Broken Homes addresses the physical nature of home, the structures and detritus that create illusions of stability and comfort, while others more directly confront the realities of growing up in a variety of unconventional and dysfunctional environments. In whichever direction these works lean, the idea of home remains a contested site for each of us, psychologically and politically. It is a contest that is never resolved. To deconstruct the idea of home is to threaten to dissolve the person formed therein. From Tea Party definitions of marriage to Occupy Wall Street tent cities, notions of home become notions of the ideal community and notions of community become formal questions played out in architecture, planning, and law. To break apart these notions is to promise both the renewal of revolution and the dissolution of hysteria.

Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting provides the axis upon which the exhibition rests. A home physically split, it is an attack upon the “typical family home" as described by Matta-Clark -- both as archetype and architecture. The splitting of Matta-Clark’s seminal work is further dissected by the other artists in this show, who present both dream and reality.

Peter Scott and Lisa Kirk expose the hyperbole of “Lifestyle Culture." Scott’s photographs set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the lower East Side juxtapose idealized billboard representations of luxury interiors with the more mundane reality of scaffolding, sidewalk sheds and detritus, making evident the violence underlying urban renewal. Kirk’s House of Cards was a 2009 installation consisting of a showroom model shanty created from 52 separate pieces of found materials sourced from stalled or abandoned development projects. Actors posing as real estate agents greeted visitors and attempted to sell time-shares in a “private residence club” called Maison Des Cartes. Both artists shine a critical light onto the spectacle of capitalism following the fall of the housing market.

Inconsistencies concerning ideals, reality, form, and function are brought to the forefront in the works of Francis Cape, Naomi Safran-Hon and Kirsten Nelson. Cape juxtaposes post-Katrina photos of New Orleans with stark and partially assembled pieces of furniture modeled after a post-war British government program of approved furniture designs. Safran-Hon’s works present photographs of interiors in Israel cut and penetrated with cement -- suggestive of the intrusions into domestic life by the military realities outside. Nelson’s sculptures are carefully crafted from common home building materials such as sheetrock and wood moldings. The works echo the domestic interiors upon which they are based, but exist in a state of suspended reference. Hovering between what they seem to be and what they seem to be lacking, the work represents an invented fragment of a non-existent whole, evoking a sense of the uncanny and the humorous.

The photographs by Anthony Marchetti and Leah Oates document traces of humanity. Oates photographs the detritus created by urbanization in Taipei. A boarded up building, a cart piled high with salvaged cardboard to be sold, and a colorful pile of objects thrown out of a window during a domestic dispute- all reflect the incongruities of poverty and progress in developing urban areas. Marchetti’s photographs are more subdued, using the sometimes-distant aesthetic of documentary photography to reveal a glimpse into the private lives of suburban dwellers. Marchetti photographed the rooms of suburban tract homes after their tenants had vacated, presenting a context without objects rather than an object without context.

Kate Gilmore and Marni Kotak examine the divisions and obstacles often present even within physical spaces that appear to be unified. Gilmore is the protagonist of her video, in which she is trapped in an attic-like space surrounded by furniture. Gilmore struggles to discard furniture through a hole in the floor, creating a haphazard pile which eventually provides a means of escape. Kotak’s site-specific installation Christmas in South Carolina recreates elements of Kotak’s family Christmas vacation in 2010. A live Christmas tree is festively decorated with photos and text that recount the fighting and dysfunction that ultimately drove the artist and her sister to escape the hostility and give up on any pretense of familial bliss.

Francis Cape apprenticed with mastercarver Dick Reid before receiving his MA from Goldsmiths College, London. In 1993 he moved to New York City. Following a decade or so of architectural interventions that addressed the inseparability of art from its context, he turned to work that confronts issues outside the studio/gallery circuit. He recently completed a body of work exploring the connection between what we saw of our society after Katrina hit New Orleans and what he sees in his own community in upstate New York. Venues that have shown his work include Propsect 1, New Orleans; the St. Louis Art Museum; P.S.1 New York; The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Public Art Fund, NY. His most recent award was a Pollock Krasner Artist’s Grant in 2010.

Kate Gilmore is an installation, video, and performance-based artist. Gilmore’s work has been included in exhibitions at: Whitney Museum of American Art for the 2010 Whitney Biennial; Brooklyn Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Bryant Park (Public Art Fund); Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Artpace, San Antonio; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts; Istanbul Museum of Art; Haifa Museum of Art; PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, New York. Gilmore has been the recipient of several international awards and honors, such as the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Award for Artistic Excellence (2010), In the Public Realm, Public Art Fund Award (2010), Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2009), Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Residency (2009), Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (2007/2008), Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance (2006), LMCC Workspace Residency (2005), and the New York Foundation for The Arts Fellowship (2005). Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Lisa Kirk's practice investigates the contradictions of consumerism and the aestheticiation of political radical signifiers and current events. Kirk received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Her solo exhibitions and installation projects have been held at Invisible/Exports, NYC; smARTspaces, NYC; PS 1 MOMA; Galeria Comercial, PR; Participant INC, NY; and MOT International, London. She has also contributed projects to 2009 Performa Biennial, North Drive Press, and Creative Time. Kirk's work has been featured in The New York Times, Flash Art, Frieze, Art in America, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and Art Review Magazine, L'Uomo Vogue, Plan B, The Guardian, Time Out London and New York. She is represented by the Invisible-Exports gallery on the Lower East Side. Her web site can be viewed at http://lisakirkprojects.com.

Marni Kotak is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who makes multimedia works in which she presents her everyday life as art. She recently garnered worldwide attention for her Birth of Baby X exhibition in which she gave birth to her first son as a live performance at Microscope Gallery. Kotak’s other “Found Performances”, or works based on daily activities, experiences, or accomplishments, include staged re-enactments of her own birth (My Birth, 2011, Alice Chilton Gallery), attending her grandfather’s funeral (2009, English Kills) and losing her virginity in a blue Plymouth (Fountain Art Fair Miami 2010). She received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College. For more information, visit www.marnikotak.com.

Anthony Marchetti is a Minnesota photographer and photography instructor whose work focuses on how people interact with their urban spaces. Marchetti completed a BA at Gustavus Adolphus College and an MFA at the University of Minnesota. A recent McKnight fellow, Minnesota State Arts Board recipient, and two-time Bush Fellowship finalist, his work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, including: the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum; Minnesota Museum of American Art; Rochester Center for the Arts; Vermont Center for Photography; SUNY, Fredonia, New York; and the Rayko Photo Center, San Francisco. Marchetti also participated in the 2005 International Artists Residency in Balatonfüred, Hungary. His work was included in a European Union Gallery exhibition in Budapest, and one of his images is in the permanent collection of the Hungarian Multicultural Center. In 2009, Marchetti was selected for participation in Review Santa Fe. His work is also in the permanent collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Gustavus Adolphus College, and Habitat for Humanity.

Gordon Matta-Clark was born in New York in 1943 and died in 1978. He studied French literature at the Sorbonne and Architecture at Cornell University. From the early 1970s, as a founding member of the artist-run Food Restaurant in New York's SoHo neighborhood, Matta-Clark participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects. His work was presented in Documenta V, Kassel, Germany; and at exhibitions in Sao Paolo, Berlin, Zurich, and in the 9th Biennale de Paris. Major projects by Matta-Clark were staged in Aachen, Paris and Antwerp. Following his death, major retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany; and IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain, among others. In 2007, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, honored him with a retrospective entitled "Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure."

Originally from Minnesota, Kirsten Nelson received a B.A. from St. Olaf College and an MFA in Sculpture from Purchase College, SUNY. Constructed out of common home building materials such as sheetrock and moldings, the sculptures exist between what they seem to be and what they seem to be lacking; what is still required in order to understand them as realized objects or idealist representations. The sculptures, based on domestic interiors, initially appear as cross sections and fragments that are meant to fit together, but in the end, cannot do so in any cogent way. Each piece evokes a recognizable site, yet it remains an invented fragment, or “false” rendition of everyday architecture. Kirsten mounted her second solo show at Frederieke Taylor Gallery in NY, 2010. She has been the recipient of studio residencies and grants in NY including the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Grant, AIM (Bronx Museum), Henry Street Settlement Artist-in-Residence, and two LMCC Swing Space Grants, including a recent residency on Governors Island, NY. She has participated in numerous site-specific exhibitions including Site 92 at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn and Projects ‘07 at the Islip Carriage House in Long Island NY. Her work has been exhibited throughout New York, Connecticut, and Minnesota.

Leah Oates has a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and M.F.A from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oates currently resides and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2012, Oates has a solo show at Susan Eley Fine Arts in NYC and a group shows at The Edward Hopper House and Woman Made Gallery. She has has solo shows at venues including The Arsenal Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Tomasulo Gallery, Real Art Ways, A4L Gallery, Sara Nightingale Gallery and the Sol Mednick Gallery at the Philadelphia University of the Arts. In 2009-2011, Oates was selected to be show work in the Art in Embassies program in Muscat, Oman. Oates has been in numerous group exhibitions at venues including Flux Factory, Wave Hill, International Print Center, Storefront for Art, Proteus Gowanus, Nurture Art Gallery, Elizabeth Heskin Contemporary, Gallery Aferro, Metaphor Contemporary Art and The Center for Book Arts and internationally at the Royal Scottish Academy & Open Eye Gallery in Scotland, Open Studio Gallery and Spin Gallery in Toronto, Galerie Joella and Turku City Art Museum in Finland, Swinton Art Centre and University of Northampton Art Gallery in England and at NEME and The National Centres of Contemporary Art in Russia and Cyprus. Oates’s work is are in many public collections including the National Museum of Women in the Art, The Brooklyn Museum Artist Book Collection, The British Library, The Walker Art Center Libraries, The Smithsonian Libraries and Franklin Furnace at MoMA.

Born in Oxford England in 1984 Safran-Hon grew up in Haifa, Israel. She received her BA Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University, 2008 in Studio Art and Art History and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2010. In 2003 Safran-Hon received the Young Artist Award from the Hecht Museum, Haifa University. She exhibited in The Rear the first Herzliya Biennial of Contemporary Art 2007, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. In the US Safran-Hon’s work has been included in the following exhibitions: Fresh Paint at Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA.; Evocatecture, Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA.; Unhinged , Gallery 263, Cambridge, MA.; Forest of the Trees, Heather James Fine Art, Jackson, WY.; Uncommon Commencement, Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA. In New York, Safran-Hon’s work had been featured in a solo exhibition at Slag Gallery, in two group shows at Marianne Boesky Gallery and P.P.O.W Gallery as well as at the non for profit NURTUREart in Brooklyn. Her video/performance work was included in the festival Handheld History, at Queens Museum of Art, New York, NY, and at Time After Time, Actions and Interactions, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA. She is represented by Slag Gallery New York.

Peter Scott is an artist, writer, and curator. He has exhibited widely in the U.S. and Europe. His projects have been featured in The New Yorker, Artforum.com, Zing Magazine, Modern Painters, the New York Times, Artscribe, Frieze magazine and his writing has appeared in Artscribe, artUS, Art Monthly, artnet magazine, among others. He is the director of the non-profit gallery carriage trade.

Broken Homes

Künstler: Francis Cape, Kate Gilmore, Lisa Kirk, Marni Kotak, Anthony Marchetti, Gordon Matta-Clark, Kirsten Nelson, Leah Oates, Naomi Safran-Hon, Peter Scott.