MIAMI.- The Museum of Contemporary Art presents the first solo U.S. museum exhibition of New York artist Christian Holstad, through November 5, 2006. Featuring a new large-scale installation combining drawings, soft sculptures and a transformed jukebox, to convey the transitory nature of reality, the exhibition Christian Holstad: Terms of Endearment will be on view in the museum's annex, MOCA at Goldman Warehouse, 404 NW 26 th Street in the Wynwood Arts District of Miami.

Christian Holstad's works transform everyday materials and recognizable objects to reflect themes of love, loss and nostalgia. In this new exhibition, life-size sculptures of donkeys, inspired by the artist's childhood memories of nativity scenes, are fabricated from the recycled wool of men's suits and chicken wire. The creatures surround a working jukebox covered in shredded yellow wool made from old sweaters, and plays melancholy ballads by iconic female singers. The donkeys, portrayed in various stages of decay portray the artist's belief that all creatures are locked in an eternal cycle of growth and dissolution.

Christian Holstad: Terms of Endearment is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Millennium Partners - Four Seasons Hotels and Tower, Miami.

Incorporated into Terms of Endearment are 40 new drawings from Holstad's Eraserhead series. The works contain newspaper images that the artist partially erased to create haunting suggestions of forms. To these, Holstad added drawn elements poetically dramatizing human features, both imagined and real .

Christian Holstad was born in Anaheim, California in 1972 and received a BFA degree from Kansas City Art Institute. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Holstad's work has been included in such exhibitions as: Greater New York , P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2005; Moving Toward the Light , Daniel Reich Gallery, New York; Beautiful Lies , Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 2005; the Whitney Biennial , 2004; and Gaity: Discovering the Lost Art (in Absentia) , Kunstahalle Zurich, Switzerland, 2004. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.