Artists: Amna Asghar & Alex Ito
Exhibition title: (O), The Stranger
Venue: Hotel Art Pavilion, New York, US
Date: August 12 – September 23, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Hotel Art Pavilion
” …Morpheus will have to have another dream: the one in which people live no matter what you dream; the one in which people die no matter what you dream; or no matter what, you dream- Because the foundations for loneliness begin in the dreamscapes you create. Their resemblance to reality reflects disappointment first.”
– Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
Hotel Art Pavilion is pleased to present “(O), The Stranger,” a two-person exhibition featuring Amna Asghar and Alex Ito. “(O), The Stranger” addresses the translation and intersection between historical and personal narrative in visual culture. Asghar’s paintings combine cropped fragments of texts and images from Pakistani digest magazines, Arabic/Urdu text, advertisements, and personal ephemera. Influenced by jhankaar, a method of musical remixing, Asghar’s compositions entangle memory, colonialism, and conflicted desire to address identity formation and its rhythmic uncertainties. Ito’s sculptural installation assembles deformed chromed objects and images of Japanese internment mounted on an aluminum structure. With his forms shifting between organic and industrial, pristine and degenerative, Ito contemplates the body/object’s ability to retain and distort legacies of violence and trauma embedded in spaces we inhabit. When transformation is imposed by everyday apparatuses, “(O), The Stranger” captures the fickle ruptures between familiarity and alienation.
Amna Asghar (b. 1984, Detroit, MI) holds an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Michigan State University. She has recently exhibited at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York), Harmony Murphy Gallery (Los Angeles), UNTITLED San Francisco, “Nasty Women” at the Knockdown Center (Queens), Whitney Houston Biennial (New York), Erin Cluley Gallery (Dallas), Hawkeye Crates (Brooklyn), Bruce High Quality Foundation (New York), The Bowery Poetry Club (New York), and Para Site (Hong Kong). In 2016, her work was included in “80 x 80” at the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC. Asghar was featured in the 2017 Focus section of the Armory Show in New York, a solo booth presented by Harmony Murphy Gallery curated by Jarrett Gregory. Her work is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.
Alex Ito (b. 1991, Los Angeles) is an artist living and working in Queens, NY. Ito has exhibited in national and international solo and group exhibitions including Springsteen (Baltimore), AALA (Los Angeles), Kimberly Klark (NY), Galerie Jeanroch Dard (Brussels), Franz Josefs Kai 3 (Vienna), Et Al (San Francisco), The Still House Group (NY), SADE (Los Angeles), Zabludowicz Collection (London), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium), Art in General (NY) and more. Upcoming projects include a solo presentation at EXPO Chicago 2017 with AALA.
Amna Asghar, Straigtening, 2017, Acrylic and screen print on canvas, 14 x 20 inches
Amna Asghar, Boom Boom (Chori Chori), 2017, Acrylic and screen print on canvas, 27 x 40 inches
Amna Asghar, Twenty Nine Weeks to a Fairness Like Never Before, 2017, Acrylic and screen print on canvas, 20 x 28 inches (diptych)
Alex Ito, In the Dunes (when my grandfather became a saguaro), 2017, Chromed resin, HDU foam, aluminum, oxidized iron, digital print on vinyl, and enamel paint, 59 x 71 x 17 inches
Alex Ito, In the Dunes (when my grandfather became a saguaro), 2017, Chromed resin, HDU foam, aluminum, oxidized iron, digital print on vinyl, and enamel paint, 59 x 71 x 17 inches
Alex Ito, In the Dunes (when my grandfather became a saguaro), 2017, Chromed resin, HDU foam, aluminum, oxidized iron, digital print on vinyl, and enamel paint, 59 x 71 x 17 inches
