ASMA: WANDER + PURSUIT

ASMA: Wander + Pursuit

November 22, 2024 – February 23, 2025

Entry Galleries


Image credit: ASMA, Wander & Pursuit, Installation, Wall panels, chairs, printer, blinds, desks, computer screens, vents, carpet, Dimensions variable, 2022. Courtesy of House of Gaga.

The work of ASMA seeks to eliminate the dichotomies between functionalism and decoration, affection and pragmatism, and chaos and control by integrating all these fields in a space that can contain contemporary contradictions. Presented at MOCAD, Wander & Pursuit is inspired by romanticist debates surrounding the artist’s role in the industrial era. In this exhibition, ASMA introduces a semi-functional office customized with organic shapes and nontraditional materials, suggesting the labor space is an extension of the human body. 

Anchored by a singular installation, the exhibition builds on the concept of ‘Metamodernism’. A new idea within architectural theory that describes the merging of the functional, strategic planning of Modernist design principles with the playful individualism of the Postmodern aesthetic. Keywords for this project, like Metamodernism, Modernism, and Postmodernism, can be defined as philosophical and artistic approaches to human life in interaction with technology. Modernism portrays the era of the factory, mass production of goods, and world wars. Postmodernism depicts the era of technological reproduction of capital, expressed by the financial industries and the globalization of bodies and commodities, and Metamodernism is the criticism of the era in which we want human civilization to become more like machines: cyborgs living between physical and cyberspace.

Image credit: ASMA, Detail of Wander & Pursuit, Wall panels, chairs, printer, blinds, desks, computer screens, vents, carpet, 2022. Courtesy House of Gaga.

ASMA visualizes the metaphoric merging of biological and artificial life as occurring in the office space, using material technology, surrealism, organic shapes, and craft processes. The installation is a site for two functions. On the one hand, it is an environment that instrumentalizes the body as a labor source, and on the other, it is a place to transform into a recreational space, such as a romantic garden. Wander & Pursuit is populated with chivalric images of the pursuit of romantic love projected on sources of contemporary immaterial labor, such as computers, printers, and other office components. These symbols designate different ways of capital accumulation and social aspirations across different times. In the words of ASMA, this space is “a ruin from a time in our past when life was divided into work and leisure.”

The exhibition is inscribed in the vanguard tradition of Latin American artists with a global perspective. It considers the nature of contemporary life, the politics of space, and human interactions. Wander & Pursuit is the first museum exhibition in the United States of the Mexico City-based artist duo ASMA, formed by Hanya Beliá and Matias Armendaris.

About the Artist


Headshot

Image credit: ASMA, formed by Hanya Beliá (left) and Matias Armendaris (right). Courtesy of the artists.

ASMA is an artist duo based in Mexico City, formed by Matias Armendaris (Ecuadorian, b. 1990) and Hanya Beliá (Mexican, b. 1994). Combined, 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, including Manifesta Biennial, Marseille, Museo Tamayo, México City, The Chicago Artist Coalition, and Denver Art Museum.

Events


Event information about upcoming exhibitions will be published in fall 2024.

Press + Media


Exhibition title  in Publication, Month Day, Year

ASMA: Wander + Pursuit is made possible with generous support from the Mellon Foundation.

ford foundation
ford foundation
ford foundation