For Immediate Release Contact: Eric Heist (
[email protected]) + Kikuko Tanaka (
[email protected]) David Antonio Cruz alwaysagoodtime January 24 – March 2, 2014 Opening reception: Friday, January 24, 7-9pm Momenta Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the work of David Antonio Cruz. Cruz’s work draws from 1950's Americana, classic films and fashion, as well as historical events to present a psychologically-charged, shifting, and unnamed space. Informed by queer, diasporic Latino experience, his work reinterprets narratives and invisible histories of migrating people in search of home. His work questions and negotiates what's being offered while partially obscuring the familiar. Cruz’s installation will combine domestic elements to simulate a living space of video, objects and paint- ings. Wooden window frames and doorways based on postcolonial architecture in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as china cabinets, a cake-like sculpture, and a paper plane-festooned chair will complete the interior. A recent live stage version of a video within a video titled Takeabite includes a chorus, orchestra, and a large cast of actors. Desire and repulsion are echoed in the video through the image of a defiled cake, with references to 1950’s domesticity and gender expectations set against a tropical landscape inhabited by forbidding and alluring sexualized figures. The temptation of integration and the opposing fear of lost identity are amplified by a soundtrack from Snow White enticing her to “take a bite”. Cruz’s work does not attempt to reconcile the forces of control and abandon, but to maintain a balance of the familiar and the unknown.