LIVING MATTER AND DEAD MATTER
solo exhibition by RASSIM®
28.04 - 26.05.2022
LIVING MATTER AND DEAD MATTER
Solo exhibition of RASSIM®
28.04 - 26.05.2022
The challenge of contemporary freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom you face, is about creating yourself. The danger is that in the process you may find yourself not quite human.
-Sol Bellow, "Ravenstein"
The "LIVING MATTER AND DEAD MATTER" series is situated in the space beyond language, after birth, before death.
The main constituents of the works are various manifestations of the corporeal. Urine from the artist's body, oil from that of the earth and burnt motor oil, the lubricant of the industrial revolution.
RASSIM® gathers in its works one of the main contradictions of society since the beginning of its existence, namely the eternal struggle between nature and culture. He fuses the two concepts, creating canvases in which we read
the history of the world in and through its materiality.
While for centuries man's quest has been towards transcending the corporate and reaching for the transcendent, RASSIM® seeks the answer precisely in corporeality, almost psychoanalytically transcending the limits of the ratio and arriving at a form of matter unencumbered by concepts.
The artist redefines the position of the artist's body - from being situated on the border, bearing, it becomes an integral element in the fabric of the world. In the works, the constructive elements of flesh - skin, blood and cells - are removed, dissolved and reduced to symbol. The artist is also the mediator, the creator of this unification, but what is at stake in his effort?
The "LIVING MATTER AND DEAD MATTER" series presents us with a renewed content of collective memory, weaving into it the functions of modernity - the relationship between oil and burnt motor oil is precisely the human, the ideologue and catalyst of this transformation. By placing these elements on a single plane, that of the canvas, the artist removes the hierarchy between them, constructing a homogeneous narrative in which the action unfolds cyclically - the substances layering, absorbing one another. In his canvases, they undergo a constant diffusion. In this way, the dualistic nature of eternal and ephemeral, body and mind and, ultimately, living and dead is revealed.
Blending together past and present, RASSIM® creates an almost homogeneous mixture in which fragments of the world's evolution are stirred, bending the axis of time to a circle.