Homeward Bound

Lisa Anne Auerbach, Elmer Batters, Razvan Boar, Melanie Bonajo, Monica Bonvicini, Polly Borland, Chris Burden, Michiel Ceulers, Karon Davis, Nancy Grossman, Namio Harukawa, Philipp Kremer, Lazaros, Kris Lemsalu, Atelier van Lieshout, Monica Majoli, Bjarne Melgaard, Daido Moriyama, Ciprian Muresan, Simphiwe Ndzube, Ana Prvacki, Gus Van Sant, Eric Stanton, Ruben Verdu, Robert Yarber

"The drabness of her daily life made her dream of luxury, her husband’s conjugal affection drove her to adulterous desires. She wished he would beat her so that she could feel more justified in hating him and taking vengeance upon him. She was sometimes amazed by the horrible conjectures that came into her mind; and yet she had to go on smiling, hearing herself told over and over that she was lucky, pretending to be happy, letting everyone believe it!" — Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

There is an irony to the concept of being "home safe." Home is the place where we keep the majority of our secrets under lock-and-key, but home is also the place where the people from whom we’re hiding these secrets dwell. Leave the water running and the bathroom door locked and no one will know what you’re doing in there; tell the Mr. you’re working late and wash that lipstick off your collar; blow the smoke out the window and douse the room with Febreze; don’t tell my husband; don’t tell my wife; don’t tell mom and dad; this is just a one-time thing… We’re in a perennial state of domestic bondage, bound to false narratives as dictated by the skeletons who live in the closet, in the ego, in the id. We cling to an antiquated notion of domestic bliss, when in reality it never existed. Home is a segregated cage for all the things about ourselves we’d rather keep to ourselves, all the little-big secrets, and they’re buried just beneath the people to whom their release would cause the most damage.

"On the edge of his tongue was the appeal 'Please stomp my grapes!' now for several years. Stomp my grapes. He did not know why, quite, nor was the appeal constantly there, and he knew every minute of the day it was inappropriate and scandalous." — Snerd and Niggero, Barry Hannah

Homeward Bound is a domestic setting where all the skeletons are let out of the closet and allowed to play on the furniture, to stomp each other’s grapes. With the eye of noted designer Oliver M. Furth, the gallery space has been transformed into a literal home, complete with a living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, beyond. Karon Davis’s Bianca sits plaintively by a front room window, drinking, smoking, waiting for a lover who will never return. Bjarne Melgaard cross-dresses in the skins of other species as if he was never quite comfortable in his own, while Lisa Anne Auerbach is very comfortable lounging around the house, reading bondage magazines in her underwear. Chris Burden’s first wife informs him in a letter that not only won’t she crucify him to their VW Bug, but that the suggestion has destroyed her relationship with the vehicle. Gold-leafed snails carry their mobile homes to the apexes of an organic landscape—the tips of Ruben Verdu’s nose and erect phallus—and both artist and travelers achieve climax simultaneously. Within the walls of this house, faces become chairs, vaginas become toothy faces, jello moulds become temples and orifices, music becomes sex itself.

Homeward Bound is home at its sweetest, most sinister, most honest. It’s where the heart is. And the liver. And the genitals.