Grand Curio Charade’s overall “bread and circuses” theme is designed as a commentary on this moment in American history. A key piece is Neal’s “Circus Maximus” oil-on-canvas painting, based on an
18th-century print that conveys the chaos and horror
of bloodthirsty gladiatorial combat in the Roman Coliseum. Neal’s version includes some of the same “entertainment acts,” plus others that include
someone being shot in the face, a man being shot from a cannon who might resemble a contemporary billionaire, and Marie Antoinette eating cake as she watches the goings-on. Neal also includes homages
to Kara Walker’s black-and-white silhouettes of the antebellum South, and Goya’s dark painting of “Saturn Devouring His Son.”

 

Neal is reluctant to discuss specific meaning behind the work, preferring that viewers draw their own conclusions, but “If you look closely” he says,
“you’re going to see this is about what’s going on
in the world today.” 

 

The artist says he wanted the exhibit’s name and theme to echo P.T. Barnum-style hucksterism in an “over-the-top satire kind of way.” The style mimics “something so exciting that it draws you in, like what some politicians do. They make it all a big spectacle, like carnival entertainment.”

 

Another large oil-on-canvas painting he’s included is “American Reichstag,” based on photographs of the 1933 fire that burned the German parliament and caused a crackdown on civil liberties and rise of Nazi rule. His multimedia “Salacia” — created with oil paint, piano keys, and wood — depicts a Roman goddess angrily surveying the entire exhibit.

 

Other artworks that Neal says “feel right as descriptive of this time” will include paper collages that combine as “a surgical freak show,” and pieces from his mournful “Bardo” series inspired by the Buddhist
name for the transitional period between death and rebirth. The “Bardo” works depict faces and other scenes he created after the 2024 election by using etching, sandpaper, and oil paint on well-used metal baking pans.

 

While he acknowledges dark themes, Neal says he’s aiming for a lighter, and perhaps more hopeful, tone with a planned installation expected to involve books, furniture, and plants. He declined to provide details, wanting visitors to, again, discover it on their own.

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The exhibit’s artwork will fill the Great Hall, as well as The Marlene Marrocco Vault Gallery. Also, in a side gallery, Neal has curated work taken from his personal collection and borrowed from area artists for an Oracles and Incantations “sideshow.”

Artists represented there will include Outer/Lower Cape artists Selina Treiff, Budd Hopkins, Paul Bowen, André van der Wende, Anna Poor, Sarah Dineen, Kathleen Sidwell, and David Wright; John Cira and Susan Carr of Falmouth; and locally connected artists Alyson Schultz, Gregory Gillespie, and Paul Murray.

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Ellen Adamson's Burnbox Circus will also be on display in the Skylight Room. The world is our circus and we all create our own acts through our experiences. Some of them are born of luck, some of tragedy and some of just making-do. We do the hard work of cobbling it all 
together to become who we are. Each of us are unique as each act in the Burnbox Circus.

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Visit Richard Neal's website here: www.richardneal.net