Alexandra Pasquale — CalArts Post Grad Show Y25

Alexandra Pasquale

(Art and Technology MFA 25)
IG: @cha0tic.bliss

ʜɈniɿγdɒ⅃, 2025

Alexandra Pasquale investigates light as both a phenomenon to study and a medium through which we study other phenomena. How images are constructed — constructs reality and scientific knowledge, in turn. Alexandra uses psychological and physical phenomena as material, with a focus in photonics, theories of perception, astronomy, optics, and physics, to explore how observation technologies shape perspective, perception and what we claim to see and know. Alexandra’s ʜɈniɿγdɒ⅃ investigates perception and subjectivity in scientific imaging. The installation consists of two pieces: the first, a backlit frame containing photographic astronomy slides with hand scratches and marks, and the second work, a glass sculpture composed of xenon, argon, and neon gases. The scratched slides stage the difference between astrophotography and telescope viewing. Scientific images are highly processed, with artificial colors added by users to final images — making visible the human subjectivity embedded in astrophotography’s supposedly objective documentation. By scratching the slides, Alexandra adds artistic interpretation to intangible cosmic objects, while also marking the images as constructed. Observation is never direct but always mediated through materials, technologies, and human decisions about processing. The plasma tube sculpture, titled ɒlυdɘИ, materializes cosmic phenomena, bringing distant matter into the gallery space where it glows under electrical current. The plasma tube glows with xenon, argon, and neon — the actual materials of nebulae and stars — creating an encounter with cosmic matter not through representation but through presence. By pairing scratched photographic documentation with physical manifestation of cosmic gases, the installation presents a range of ways we materialize and understand distant events.

PROXY CHIMERA ORACLE

CalArts 2025