Catherine Rae Pasquarelli

My sculptures and the paintings that evolve from them depict environments that identify with their inhabitants, capturing their loneliness and deterioration in a seemingly abandoned place. They maintain a subtle human quality: a light on inside, a ladder, a rope. They hold ghosts of memories, conversations, and portraits within them. These are places inhabited by people with a sentimentality for heirlooms and a reverence for history, custom and tradition. Driven by fear, they have a tendency toward isolation and a resistance to change. They seek to preserve an idealized version of small town life, clinging to something that never truly existed as their world crumbles into something unrecognizable.

———

Cate Pasquarelli received a BFA from the Cooper Union and studied at the Slade School of Art in London, UK. She has exhibited her work at the Wassaic Project, BravinLee Programs, Steve Turner, Art on Paper, and SPRING/BREAK Art Fair in New York and Los Angeles. In the fall of 2024, Pasquarelli’s work will be shown at the Brooklyn Museum. Her work is included in the collections of Beth Rudin DeWoody as well as filmmakers Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver. Selected residencies and awards include the Cooper Union Medici Award for excellence in art, a Winter Residency at the Studios at MASS MoCA, and a Programming Fellowship at the Wassaic Project.

Pasquarelli currently lives and works between Wassaic, NY and Brooklyn.

Portrait by Jeff Barnett-Winsby, Wassaic Project