Richard Pasquarelli

While his past works often evoke an ambiguous mixture of pending misfortune and unease, in Freedom, Pasquarelli also examines the after effects of a society plagued by greed and excess. In the exhibition’s largest and most telling piece, New Hope Alley, sacred icons such as the American flag and the Buddha are carelessly strewn in a gated alleyway. A light bulb, once symbolizing American invention and progress, no longer has anything to illuminate. A naked, child-like mannequin leans against a brick wall with its head bent as if disillusioned, giving the scene an unsettling quality. No longer useful, the material commodities are severed and decayed to the point of deformity.

Pasquarelli’s three graphic, magnified bodies of a man, woman, and child emphasize a conscious human disfigurement. These bulbous bodies layered with fat almost look less human than Pasquarelli’s mannequin, and yet are more disturbing because they’re taken from life. The theme of overindulgence continues in Yard, where a vibrant blue sky starkly juxtaposes the rusty skeletons of piled cars. After years of polluting the skies, the vehicles become actual trash as they are haphazardly stacked and forgotten. In Pasquarelli’s Arlington Cemetery, the washed out, faded tombstones recalls a chilling nostalgia for a squandered past. The graves of fallen soldiers exhibit human lives sacrificed during America’s quest to fuel the very machinery that eventually becomes junkyard waste.