At the centre of my ironic faith
Asma, Marlon Kroll, Chris Lloyd
6 December 2020 - 28 February 2021

A coat hangs nonchalantly, blinds lay splayed on the floor, and a diagram for braiding hair sits alongside facts that will blow your mind.

Asma, Kroll and Lloyd focus on the familiar, the domestic, and what surrounds us in the attempt to make our environments resonate on expanded scales. Exposing the mundane and revealing overlooked aspects of the everyday, they provoke exchanges between structures and surfaces, both literally and conceptually. Through assemblage, Asma’s transformation of materials, Kroll’s modular mechanisms, and Lloyd’s multimedia collage-drawings uncover the disfunctional order of things.

Their explorations, like fetishists’ realizations of their fantasies, navigate the poetics of ambiguity. They strategize phantasmagorical sublimations of their own observations.

The works exist within myth, distopia, and epiphany. Layer upon layer, skin manifests as a protective membrane, a sensitive sealant, a social envelope that is subject to violence, and a mysterious incarnation.

The line between fiction and reality is an illusion, and irony obscures it.

 

Asma is an artist duo based in Mexico City, formed by Matias Armendaris (b. 1990, Ecuador) and Hanya Beliá (b. 1994, México). The duo focuses on developing work produced exclusively through active collaboration. Their work uses open narratives and architectural spaces exploring formal interrelations between painterly and sculptural expressions. They hold an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Emily Carr University, as well as a BFA in Visual Arts from the Facultad de Artes y Diseño (UNAM). The duo has exhibited internationally at Manifesta Biennial (France), Museo Tamayo (México), The Chicago Artist Coalition (USA), Embajada (Puerto Rico), PEANA (México), Makeroom (USA), Galería CURRO (México), Galería Sankovsky (Brazil), A.M. 180 Gallery (Czech Republic), Jessica Silverman Gallery (USA), Rachel Uffner (USA), Centre Clark (Canada), Diablo Rosso Gallery (Panama), Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito (Ecuador), XIV Bienal de Cuenca (Ecuador), Pane Projects (Italy).

Marlon Kroll (b. 1992, Germany) is a German/Canadian artist living and working in Montreal. Kroll holds a BFA in Fine Arts (Ceramics concentration) from Concordia University. In 2017, he participated in a creation residency at Vermont Studio Center. In 2020, Marlon Kroll received the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists from the Hnatyshyn Foundation. Recent exhibitions include Camayuhs, Atlanta; Interstate Projects, Brooklyn (USA), Centre Clark, Parisian Laundry, Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Galerie René Blouin, Calaboose, soon.tw, Montreal; Clint Roenisch; 8eleven, Bunker 2, Toronto (Canada). His work is currently on view at Blouin-Division and the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal.

Chris Lloyd (b. 1994, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA) is a multimedia artist and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. He plays with themes of nostalgia and personal narrative by manipulating and layering found material. His collaborative works with Sara Yukiko Mon is currently on view at Gern en Regalia, New York (USA).