Do Not Pass Go

2011 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

57H x 49W x 56D inches

Jason Meadows

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Jason Meadows’s Do Not Pass Go (2011) depicts Richie Rich, “the poor little rich boy” of the 1950s comic strip. As his steel outline gleefully makes off with a bag of money and a stack of bills, another icon of affluent America, Uncle Pennybags (otherwise known as the Monopoly Man), is crushed underfoot between two heavy blocks. Behind them lies a broken piggy bank, depicted upside down with eyes X-ed out. The scene represents the collision of two fictional worlds—both geared toward children—in which being well moneyed is assumed to be a universal aspiration. With the free market unleashed, these two nostalgic, seemingly innocuous figures are made to compete against one another in a confrontation that begins to read as sinister.

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The Los Angeles–based artist Jason Meadows uses found and manufactured objects to craft idiosyncratic assemblages. Though smart and studied, his constructions are hardly academic. Rich in character development, narrative, and humor, they suggest a position of critical kinship with comics, cartoons, and Hollywood films.

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Colors:

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• black.s.05
• fantasy.n.02
• money.n.02
• capitalism.n.01
• fictional_character.n.01
• cartoon.n.01
• united states
• american