Chris Larson: St. Paul, Kapenguria

Update March 19th: A note from Bethel "For the safety and wellbeing of our students, employees, and guests, Bethel has decided to cancel this event given the rising number of COVID-19 cases nationwide." The exhibition will be rescheduled for the Fall. For additional closure information and how you can support the local arts community during this time, please see our COVID-19 statement.


St. Paul, Kapenguria
replication/relocation/conflagration/collaboration
2012-2020
 

In 2013, Chris Larson constructed a full-scale model in his Saint Paul studio of the 1962 Frank Kacmarcik home designed by Bauhaus trained architect Marcel Breuer. This 1800 sq. ft. home is located three miles from the artist’s studio on the bluffs of the Mississippi River. Larson’s research on this project has expanded and continued for the past seven years.
 

For the past 10 years, the focus of Chris Larson’s studio practice has been investigating architectural spaces through sculpture, video, photography and drawings. Larson builds and reproduces spaces, objects and specific architectural sites that look familiar but have been severely affected, disfigured, or transformed through relocation, replication and distortion. His last four projects have dealt with specific architectural sites that are deeply connected to history and location.
 

In this exhibition, St. Paul, Kapenguria, we see documentation of the artist’s process through photography, original blueprints, sculpture, artist made book, video, drawings, and ephemeral materials tracking the history of this project.
 

As the full scale replica was built in his studio, Larson became interested in the views from inside the Breuer house out into his studio space. Larson produced a series of fifteen black and white silver gelatin prints of the interior spaces of Breuer’s reconstructed house. A limited edition, artist made book was produced from the images in this series. The house was then transported to downtown Saint Paul for the Northern Spark Festival to be set on fire in a project titled Celebration/Love/Loss. Photo and video documentation of the building, relocating, and burning is on view in this exhibition.
 

Most recently, a full scale replica of the Saint Paul Marcel Breuer home is being rebuilt for a project in Kapenguria, Kenya. A ninety minute film featured in this exhibition documents the beginning of its construction. This project is in collaboration with friend of the artist, Michael Kimpur, Bethel alum, tribal elder in rural Kenya and Director of Daylight Center School in Kapenguria, Kenya. This continues Larson’s investigation of architecture, site, and purpose, but moves it in a new, international direction, proposing to re-site and reinvest a repurposed St. Paul structure on a Kenyan site.
 

Artist Talk: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm in the Eastlund Room, CLC Building, 2nd Level. Reception in the Olson Gallery following the talk.
 

About the Artist:
Chris Larson is a multi-media artist based in East Saint Paul. He is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota and also the publisher of INREVIEW, a print publication presenting critical responses to art in the Twin Cities. Since receiving his BFA from Bethel University in 1989 and his MFA from Yale University in 1991, Larson has received numerous awards including a New Work Project Grant from The Harpo Foundation, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and most recently was awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Larson had solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY and his work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In 2018, Larson’s work was included in the 11th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil and a solo 10-year survey exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH.

Image Credit: courtesy of the artist