Leo Asemota’s multifaceted artistic practice is based at EotLA, a modest self-contained complex in London with his studios, publishing enterprise and the Contemporary Rooms project space.
Born in Benin City, Nigeria in 1967, Asemota has since gained a reputation for being an exceptionally prolific artist, quietly amassing a body of thoughtful and engaging work across a broad range of media.
Asemota’s films have toured South Africa and the United States with screenings at the ICA, The Lux, Curzon Cinema and Riverside Studios in London. The film Cult: making of FiTH WORK #33 (2003) premiered at 198 Gallery, London (March 6 – 8, 2003) highlighting the beginning of a short cycle of films and photographs featuring the artist as subject. Cult is an outstanding and thought provoking work of many-valued logic exploring the generative forms of identity and aesthetics.
FiTH WORK are witty and sublime creations that is a thesis on individuality, popular culture, race, life, death and other pre-occupations. FiTH, an acronym Leo composed meaning ‘fever in the head’ began in 1999, and are works produced using the idioms of various art forms. The exhibition at The Fount Gallery, London (March 8 – April 20, 2003) was the first showing of works from this inconclusive collection; there are also no multiples in the series, affirming Asemota’s rejection of machine -like driven art.
Asemota’s photographic work is often described as abstract form combined with Expressionist social comment. The Black & White Case Studies – #1 (2000) and #6 (2003) – of which there will be six are works on the unstable discourse on race and colour, whilst Map of a City (2001) enriches the idiom of documentary photography and bring to bear an approach to the medium that is fresh and sharp. The landscape Leo presents in Map of a City is the natural and urban environment expanded to incorporate his own physical experience of the world.