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| Zero defies definition by Miranthe Staden-Garbertt | ||
| Asha Zero has the element of surprise on his side. He creates what appears to be collages of magazine cutouts until you find out that they are, in fact,super-realistic renderings of collages in acrylic on board. Influenced by the whacky ways of Dada, and the superfluous polish of pop art, one can easily find a recognisible niche in which to place the artist. Only one would be wrong. The artist`s love of cut-and-paste, equals only his love for labour-intensive painting in the classical, realistic style. The fragmented picture plain has been surreptitiously unified, a copy of copies. Where meticulous precision meets superfluous consumerism, the surprise is all in the disguise. And chances are there is no getting to the bottom of it, which no doubt is the point. It`s a simulation game, and nothing is as it seems. Not only are the pictures deceptively misleading in terms of technique and concept, but the artist himself is potentially a figment of the "real" artist`s imagination. Having fun with ideas of identity and reality, Zero elucidates the difficulty of distinguishing the fake from the real. He brings to the fore the possibility of there being no need to distinguish as the one blends into the other with no clear borders. Thus the gates of meaning remain wide open, and contradictions are allowed inside. Through these "schizoid portraits" the artist is both present in a fake autobiography of an alter ego, but also detached in a sense from his invention, allowing it to grow intuitively nonsensically, even scientifically. Similarly, in another project, not here exhibited, his message is encoded and disseminated in brown booklets, a form of obscure propaganda freely distributed, a quizzical invasion of privacy by roadkillvisiontoiletries, an imaginary crew or company. They are missives of a sort, and their medium is somehow the message. I have some copies in my home-they have irritated, intrigued and inspired various failed attempts at decoding. Still, they flummox me. Asha Zero flummoxes me. It`s a sure- fire way of generating interest, and pseudo-authentic cult status hovers coyly on the horizon. | ||
| Pretoria News, 26 October, 2004 Exhibition: Winner in Hawaii, Outlet, Tshwane University of Technology, Arts Campus October 2004 | ||
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