CENIT

MARIO ASEF
a love story
OPENING: Nov. 16th 2018, 6-10pm
Show: Nov.17th – Jan. 12nd 2018
as part of the official ArtDüsseldorf VIP Program
@ Gerresheimer Str. 33, 40211 Düsseldorf
NEWS: CROSSFADES & TALK W/ MARIO ASEF: Jan. 11. 2019 / 7 pm

Mario Asef, Cenit, flyer artwork based on found astronomy book pages stamped ‘CENIT’

The video work Cenit tells a love story, turning this into a metaphor around the moment on which, the sun doesn’t cast any shadow. Mario Asef’s work revisited the vitalistic perception of life. Life is a fight for keeping every particle concentrated in a body. His work relates to the simple but stronger fact that existence is a condition within the universe, and that every human task, from mathematics, archeology, economics are exercises to compile with this task.

Cenit and Asef’s body of work generally are characterized by a vitalist position. His work proceeds from the observation that life is a constant act. Asef sees life as the ceaseless task of maintaining the heterogeneity of each of the innumerable particles comprising our organism, concentrated in a single body, but permeable and in constant interaction with the environment. All human activities, from mathematics, archeology, art, economics, etc. are expressions of this essential task, the struggle between the union and dissolution of the parts.

See more

Mario Asef’s artistic works develop—as he himself states—out of “the illusory construction of social reality.” Mario Asef’s works are divided into three thematic categories: the realm of public space, the construction of which is language-based, the realm of history and writing about history as mediated reality construct, and the realm of scientific methods. His photographs, diagrams, videos, texts, and interventions in public space all deal with the legibility of normative orders that extend beyond purely grammatical micro-urban codes and which simultaneously integrate utopian and ideology-critical gestures. Mario Asef uses these normative orders to develop a methodology that combines causality with happenstance, pushing things into absurdity.

– a touring exhibition – was shown this year @ THE DRAWING HUB, BERLIN, FEB. 2018 & @ GRIFFIN ART PROJECTS, VANCOUVER, CANADA, MAY 2018

Exhibition Views

Mario Asef, Cenit, installation view at wildpalms Düsseldorf with framed works and a wire-and-stone sculpture on a brick wall
Mario Asef, Cenit, installation view at wildpalms Düsseldorf with an overhead projector piece, framed works and small floor sculptures
Mario Asef, Cenit, video still projected at wildpalms Düsseldorf showing the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán with subtitled text, beside a vitrine
Mario Asef, Cenit, installation view at wildpalms Düsseldorf with a beach video ending in ‘fin/end’ and a wall monitor showing a light within a large fabric surround
Mario Asef, Cenit, installation view at wildpalms Düsseldorf, framed works on a white wall with a hanging wire sculpture
Mario Asef, Cenit, installation view at wildpalms Düsseldorf, framed works on brick and white walls with wire and rod sculptures
Mario Asef, Cenit, installation view at wildpalms Düsseldorf, framed works flanking a suspended wire and rod sculpture
Mario Asef, Cenit, video still of a beach with a thin red marker casting no shadow
Mario Asef, Cenit, found book page with a German star chart, stamped ‘CENIT’
Mario Asef, Cenit, found book page on lunar phases with pink tape and rust-toned stains, stamped ‘CENIT’
Mario Asef, Cenit, found book page with a woodcut of astronomers measuring the sky, stamped ‘CENIT’
Mario Asef, Cenit, graph-paper drawing with a handwritten Spanish note on the Aztec New Fire ceremony and the zenith passage of a star
Mario Asef, Nadir, graph-paper drawing with a handwritten Spanish note on the sun’s path and painted crescent forms