Date of Award
12-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Art
Committee Chair/Advisor
Todd McDonald
Committee Member
Alex Schechter
Committee Member
Dr. Beth Lauritis
Abstract
This thesis serves as an attempt to articulate, understand, and testify to my experiences within the immanent present. Defined as moments where the world impresses itself upon my awareness with such a force that it eclipses all else, the experience of immanence is necessarily undeniable and ephemeral. These moments are accompanied by a combined sense of exultation in the world’s existence and poignant longing for something beyond. I feel as though I am embedded within something great and meaningful, as the material world acts upon me, yet I remain ever unsatiated by this experience as the world inevitably returns once more to mundanity.
The artwork in this exhibition captures and articulates the overwhelming forcefulness of immanence, all while maintaining the qualities of exultation and longing. Careful attention to intimate details, visual fragments, and precious materials all articulate the experience of immanence, while figure-ground confusion, negative space, and gestural mark-making all visualize the sense of longing that accompanies it. In many of my paintings, figures become experiential surrogates for the viewer, dwelling within the immanent as a relational presence. In other pieces, bookbinding brings this imagery into the viewer’s hand, sequentially revealing them within cohesive, physical objects. By meditating on the singular and intimate parts of the world, my paintings articulate the information gathered from my own heightened sensitivity and receptivity to the forcefulness of being. The images are testimonies to the beauty found within the world, inviting proposing perspective of the mundane that reaches beyond the oversimplification born of familiarity.
Recommended Citation
Pasquarelli, Joel, "Dwelling / Knowing / Loving: Imaging the Immanent Present" (2025). All Theses. 4673.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4673