The Disappearing City
Michael Angelo Bala, Braden Hollis, Enzo Iwase, Anton Munar, Emma Soucek, WInona Sloane Odette, Jessy Razafimandimby
CASTLE is pleased to present The Disappearing City, a group exhibition curated by Daisy Sanchez featuring Michael Angelo Bala, Braden Hollis, Enzo Iwase, Anton Munar, Emma Soucek, Winona Sloane Odette, Jessy Razafimandimby.
In 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright published The Disappearing City, a treatise that laid out his vision for Broadacre, a decentralized urban planning model. Wright sought to reimagine the modern city, shifting it from the hub of the collective to the domain of the individual. Each inhabitant was to reside within a one acre plot of land, a manifest destiny homestead in an industrialized America. Broadacre held the automobile at its heart–pedestrian traversal of the city was limited, and a mass transit network was all but nonexistent. Resembling a proto-Levittown or the Los Angeleno sprawl, Wright’s utopic idyll plotted a landscape and built environment that recoiled from human touch, secluding citizens within an apparatus of atomizing enclosures.
Five years on from The Disappearing City’s release, Ayn Rand began to pen a series of fan letters to Wright, who served as the inspiration for Howard Roark, the architect protagonist of her novel The Fountainhead. Rand cast The Fountainhead as a “monument” to Wright, a fellow trenchant pioneer of individualism, writing that it was to be modeled after his spirit and work. Over the course of their decade long correspondence, their professed commitment to the individual belied a deeper yearning for connection. In her first letter to Wright, Rand stated that her novel was “not really about architecture, or rather it is not only about architecture. I have chosen architecture merely as the medium through which my theme can be expressed best.” Like Rand, Wright shared a desire to design a way out and a way forward, utilizing architecture as a means to espouse a greater philosophy of living, yet both failed to anticipate the trap set by their aspirations.
The exhibition at CASTLE takes architecture and the built environment, with the ambitions of Broadacre as an example, as an open, overarching structure through which to explore topics ranging from utopian fallacies, ideological contradiction and value systems, longing and the search for connection, isolation and atomization, material memory, social conventions, and the warping and weaving of space. Whether shaped by Rand’s Objectivist ideals or Wright’s Usonian principles, the urban landscape acts as a colliding force that bridges disparate individuals. These divisions of our environment force the question of where do I fit within space just as much as it does the question of where do we, collectively, fit, and how do we find one another.
- Daisy Sanchez
Anton Munar (b. 1997, Copenhagen, DK) lives and works in between Copenhagen, Denmark and Majorca, Spain. He holds a BFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and will receive his MFA in 2023. Recent group exhibitions include Alte Freunde, neue Freunde at Claas Reis, London, UK (2022), Julesalon at Alice Folker, Copenhagen, DK (2020), LANDSCAPE MODERN OIL PAINTING CANVAS PAINTING ABSTRACT OIL PAINTING WALL HANGING at Jir Sandel, Copenhagen, DK (2018) and Landscape Modern Oil Painting Canvas Painting Abstract Oil Painting Wall Hanging at Galleri Benoni, Copenhagen (2017).
Winona Sloane Odette (b. 1998, Minneapolis, MN) lives and works in Queens, NY. She studied at the School of Visual Arts and the Cooper Union. Recent group exhibitions include Poem Objects at April April, New York, NY (2022).
Enzo Iwase (b. 1997) lives and works in New York, NY. She holds a BFA from the Cooper Union, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Hic Sunt Dracones at Deli Gallery, Mexico City, MX (2023), Maverick Magician Muse at Deli Gallery, New York, NY (2022), Works on Paper on Fridges at Harkawik, New York, NY (2022), and Not Again at Design Center, Providence, RI (2021).
Michael Angelo Bala (b. 1994, Maui, HI) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He holds a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions include Trickster Makes The World w/ Gay Outlaw, at Delaplane, San Francisco, CA (2021), Street View at Park View / Paul Soto, Los Angeles, CA (2020) and One Hundred at New Wight Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, CA (2019).
Emma Soucek (b. 1996, Long Beach, CA) lives and works in New York, NY. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Feeling Tone at Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles, CA (2022), Edge Events at Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles, CA (2021), and Maddy Parrasch & Emma Soucek at Safe Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2019). Recent group exhibitions include What’s it All About at Jenkins Johnson, Brooklyn, NY (2021), The Thick Stream at CANADA, New York, NY (2021), 11:11 at At Peace Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2020), Honest Gravy at Marinaro Gallery, New York, NY (2020), and 100! at Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, SW (2020).
Jessy Razafimandimby (b. 1995, Antananarivo, Madagascar) lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds a BFA from the Haute Ecole d'Art et Design de Genève, Geneva, CH. Selected solo exhibitions include à présent !, à tempérament ! at Valentin 61, Lausanne, CH (2022), Avec le pain, toujours prêts à surgir at Sans titre, Paris, FR (2022), Miracle sur ce qui a du cœur at Art au Centre, Geneva,CH (2021), Fille de corsaire at 13 vitrine, Renens, CH (2021), O.O.O.O.O. at Espace HIT, Geneva (2021), Droit de Visite de Digestion at Arsenic, Lausanne, CH (2020), and On The Temporary Balcony Behind The Dirty Window at 1.1., Basel (2020). Selected group exhibitions include Bonna, the 6th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2023), Claustrophobia Alpina III: Relief at Forde, Geneva, CH (2023); Mon palais, choir at Sans titre, Paris, FR (2022), Sleeping In, June, Berlin, DE (2022), Species of Space, Walgreens windows project space of The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL (2021), Salon Suisse at La Biennale Architettura, Venice, IT (2021), Lemaniana: Reflections on Other Scenes at Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva, CH (2021).
Braden Hollis (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Paradise at UTA Artist Space, Atlanta, GA (2023). Recent group exhibitions include Salt Fish at New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022) and Surprise! at Tilton Gallery, New York, NY (2022). Hollis was a resident at the Macedonia Institute, Chatham, NY (2022) and is a recipient of the Sylvia Appelman Painting Award (2019).
Daisy Sanchez (b. 1998, Salzburg, Austria) lives and works in New York, NY. She holds a BA in Culture, Criticism, and Curation from Central Saint Martins College, London, UK. Recently organized exhibitions include Ruoru Mou at 4 Cose, London, UK (2022), Trivial Pursuit: Ana Viktoria Dzinic, Alessia Gunawan, Iris Luz, Erica Skye Ohmi, Sara Yukiko Mon, Hannah Taurins, and Inez Valentine at Entrance, New York, NY (2022), Ann Zhao, Kenneth Winterschladen, Louis Osmosis, Marika Thunder, Stefany Lazar, Amy Stober, Lina McGinn, and Casimir Ernest Gasser at One Piece NYC, New York, NY (2022), Ruoru Mou at Daisy’s Room, London, UK (2021), Inez Valentine at Daisy’s Room, London, UK (2021), Gal Schindler & Nico-Lou Monheim Carrasquillo at Daisy’s Room, London, UK (2021), The Void: Eli Bornowsky, Judith Dean, Nathaniel Donnett, Jenny Gagalka, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Laura Hunt, Sebastian Jefford, Coco Klockner, Abby Lloyd, Alex Lukas, Ben Seeley, Daisy May Sheff, Sophie Stone, Santiago Taccetti, Lumin Wakoa, and Simon Zoric at White Columns, New York, NY, online (2021), Eija-Liisa Ahtila: If 6 Was 9, 1995 for SCREENERS at Helena Anrather, New York, NY, online (2020), Brie Moreno at Daisy’s Room, London, UK (2020), Rawr means I love you in dinosaur: James Gregory Atkinson & Riley Hanson at Lubov, New York, NY (2019).
