May 27- June 18, 2017
Please join us for the opening of Kelly Loudenberg’s solo show, “Foam Sweet Foam” at Monte Vista Projects new location. With materials and actual props used by The Reality Based Training Association (RBTA), Loudenberg assembled a living space that can completely absorb bullets.
This bullet-absorbent still life, constructed of foam furniture, is a replica of a replica. The RBTA, an advocacy group, proposes that these foam simulations are the best way to prepare officers for shooter scenarios, arguing that they allow “the brain and body to process the experience as if it were actually occurring.”
By moving these props from the shoot-house to the gallery, the artist casts a critical eye on the kind of society that requires such training. With gun violence ever-present and rising, might we all be safer with this “soft-object” domestic design?
Kelly Loudenberg is a filmmaker & artist who has been exploring the physical and emotional landscapes of American justice for over a decade. This project has grown out of her work exploring the fine line between fact and fiction, and how that bleeds into the contemporary world.
She has recently completed production on a new documentary series for Netflix about wrongful convictions based on false confessions using the interrogation tapes to contextualize six separate cases (set to premiere in August 2017).
Her work has been shown at the Maryland Institute College of Art, SXSW Film Festival, and the Guggenheim Labs. She has been artist-in-residence at the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
Foam Sweet Foam was supported in part by Borscht Corp.