2020 IRVIN PASCAL
As a new decade begins, Irvin Pascal presents a new body of work appropriately titled No End to New Beginnings. Taken from the lyrics of a school hymn he sang as a child, the title shuttles us between the realm of autobiographical memory and more universal questions, such as how, in the artist's words, "childhood affects the trajectory of one’s life, and at which point does one discover new beginnings.”
At thirty-two, Pascal has already had "new beginnings" of his own as a budding architect and a professional boxer before ultimately emerging as an important new voice in contemporary art, and his rugged, high-contrast paintings combine the discipline and tenacity of a pugilist with the analytical rigor of an architect. Seemingly abstract, Pascal's compositions often contain figurative and narrative elements, creating a dialogue between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. For instance, the stripes and circles of AJ versus Klitschko, not only constitute an aesthetically pleasing pattern but also, as the title implies, the ropes of a boxing ring and the heads of audience members from the historic 2017 heavyweight fight.
Pascal's mother is Nigerian, and elements of Nigerian culture — from contemporary fashion, film, and popular dance to traditional textiles — is as much a part of his aesthetic arsenal as Cubist fragmentation, deconstructivist architecture, and other forms of European abstraction. The title of his large painting, If so doxology, comes from an idiomatic Nigerian expression of joy (similar to "Praise be!"), which he remembers his cousin using in letters to the family. "Sometimes the tone of a word, whether understood or not, affects the atmosphere around a work," Pascal says. By drawing from multiple linguistic and aesthetic sources, he hopes to “widen the range of interpretations.”