Casey Kaplan
The Aspen Art Museum’s third Jane and Marc Nathanson Distinguished Artist in Residence was New York-based artist Marlo Pascual. Pascual combines glamorous photographs of women from the 1940s and 50s with found objects and light sources to create brooding, psychologically charged work. Pascual’s elegant installations and theatrical lighting—varying from old lamps and candlelight to fluorescents and colored theater gels—animate the women in the photographs, enacting the dramatic potential frozen in the still frames of a bygone era. The hope and allure of Hollywood’s past is transmuted into melancholy, reflecting the unfulfilled dreams of countless anonymous actresses and models. This exhibition was Marlo Pascual’s first solo museum exhibition.