Launch Invitation to The Ens Project's First Principles by Leo Asemota

International Wed 07-09-2011

Launch Invitation to The Ens Project's First Principles by Leo Asemota
Press Release | New Art Exchange

New Art Exchange, Nottingham cordially invites you to the launch of their next exhibition "The Ens Project's First Principles" by Leo Asemota, opening 16th September at 6pm and runnig till 26th November 2011.

The Ens Projects First Principles.

Leo Asemota (b. 10 August, 1967 in Benin City, Nigeria) is based in London. His practice is open to many disciplines including being part of an artistic complex, a project space and an independent publishing enterprise. For the past six years, Asemota has been working on “The Ens Project”.

Unfolding in phases and fixated on the human head as its expressive weight, the project is informed by a ritual of head worship of the Edo peoples of Benin called Igue, Victorian age of invention and Empire building and Walter Benjamin’s text “The Artwork in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility” in linking up ideas on the essential self in light of scientific and industrial advances in contemporary life.

First Principles (2005 - 2008) formally establishes phase one of The Ens Project. Considered an essential preliminary and evolved over six stages, this survey at New Art Exchange is the foremost presentation in its entirety of Asemota’s appraisal of the validity of the trinity of sources giving structure to his ideas and his underlying focus on the head.

Encompassing photographs, orhue (kaolin chalk) and coal drawings, sculptures and video installations, the body of work also offers a glimpse of “The Handmaiden” the central character in the recently completed second phase as well as the conceptual framework for “Eo ipso” the multi-media live artwork originated from the Igue ritual in the project’s imminent third and final phase.

Recent exhibitions of works from The Ens Project include solo shows: The Prime Mover’s will on the Architect (2010) Contemporary Rooms at EotLA, London; The Handmaiden Part 2 (2010) Centrum Beeldeende Kunst Zuidoost, Amsterdam; The Handmaiden Part 1(2010) Metal, Edge Hill Station Liverpool and Testimony (2009) BookArts Bookshop, London. Group shows and screenings include Africa Reflected on Video (2009) Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam; One’s History is Another’s Misery (2009) Stedelijk Museum (Bureau Amsterdam) from Autocenter Berlin; Living Landscapes (2009) Aberystwyth University and Emerging Discourse Part 2: Performance and Mimicry (2008) Bodhi Art New York.

The exhibition has been curated by David Schischka Thomas.

A private view will be on Thursday 15 September, from 6pm , followed thereafter by an afterparty from 8pm featuring music by Hemulen Soundz.

Posted By: Allan Kapten

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