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.

David Antonio Cruz received his MFA from and his BFA from Pratt Institute. He attended Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture and the AIM program at Museum. He is a recipient of the 2013 Franklin Furnace Fund and the Urban Artist Initiative Award in 2011. His workhas been exhib- ited at El Museo del Barrio, Bronx Museum, Jersey City Museum, Museode Puerto Rico and various galler- ies. Most recently at Lehmann Maupin, the IslipMuseum of Art, and Performa 13. His films have been shown at the Big Screen Project, the Anthology Film Archives, Arte Americas, El Museum Del Barrio and variousinstallations in , Chapel Hill and Miami. This summer his work will be part of the Portrait Now exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery. The artist works and lives in , NY.

Momenta's programming is supported in part by: Bloomberg Philanthropies, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, the Harriet Ames Charitable Trust, the Foundation For Contemporary Arts, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Greenwich Collection LTD, The Jerome Foun- dation, The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Community Trust, The New York State Council on the Arts, and individual contributors including Agnes Gund, Ray Mortenson & Jean Wardle, and many others .

MOMENTA ART, 56 BOGART STREET, BROOKLYN, NY 11206, WWW.MOMENTAART.ORG, [email protected] 718-218-8058, GALLERY HOURS: 12-6PM, THURSDAY-MONDAY