• Fifty ( Rush to Relics ) - Image 1
  • Fifty ( Rush to Relics ) - Image 2
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Alfonse Pagano

Fifty ( Rush to Relics )

Fifty ( Rush to Relics )

€779,08 EUR
€779,08 EUR
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Edition
Fifty I see the American flag not as a fixed symbol, but as something unstable. The stars—meant to represent the 50 states—have fallen out of place. They sit at the bottom of a clear case. Still visible, but no longer holding together. This piece comes from a growing unease with the gap between what America says it is and what it’s become. The fallen stars point to that breakdown—loss of trust, strain on democracy, and a sense that things aren’t holding. It’s both a kind of marker and a warning: when symbols are no longer backed by action, they start to lose their meaning.

Artwork Details

Artist:
Alfonse Pagano
Artist Gallery:
View all works by Alfonse Pagano
Year Created:
2019
Dimensions:
6.5 × 13 × 3in
Edition:
Original 1/1
Style:
The eye meets a tall, spare wooden case first: a warm oak frame enclosing a field of clear emptiness above a dense accumulation of white stars at the base. Pagano sets the composition as a vertical chamber, using transparency and restraint to turn the lower cluster into a charged repository rather than a decorative motif. The palette is limited to wood grain, white, and the faint gray shadows cast by the stars, which sharpen the work’s cool, elegiac presence. Its language is aligned with Conceptual sculpture and assemblage, with a political edge that recalls the memorial logic of Joseph Cornell’s boxes and the material critique of postwar American object-making.
Tags:
conceptual sculpture,assemblage,american flag,white,wood frame,transparency,political critique,minimal composition,memory,decay

About Alfonse Pagano

Alfonse Pagano creates original artwork available to collect on Art Emerge, an AI-powered marketplace for artists and collectors.

Born in 1951 in Paterson, New Jersey, into a third-generation Italian American family. Paterson was gritty, vibrant, and full of contradictions—elements that continue to shape how He sees and make art. Raised by a single mother who saw his creative spark early, He was given freedom to explore. By fourteen, He knew art wasn’t a hobby—it was a path. Though He studied briefly at the School of Visual Arts, He is mostly self-taught. Alfonse learned by making, reading, and working with others—most memorably, Len Lye in the early ’70s. His energy and commitment left a mark. Alfonse has had many studios the first one was above Beacon Paints on the corner of Amsterdam and 78 Street.

Artist Statement

I began somewhere in the late 1960s, working with cardboard, photographs, and found images—early attempts to understand and organize my world, to hold a fragment of landscape, memory, and human presence as a visual object.. Even then, what mattered to me was not only what the object became, but the act of altering it: cutting, burning, layering, erasing, and rebuilding. The action itself carried as much weight as the final form.I have allways divided my time between painting and sculpture and the combining of the two.

Selected Highlights

  • All Politics Are Local, Jackson Junge Gallery, Chicago, IL
  • Rituals and Identity, Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY
  • Dreads, WBGO Gallery, Newark, NJ
  • Dreads, Paterson Museum, Paterson, NJ
  • Dreads, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

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