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Fred Tomaselli
Fred Tomaselli makes exquisitely rendered paintings on wood panels, combining an array of unorthodox materials suspended in a thick layer of clear, epoxy resin. Medicinal herbs, prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants are combined with images cut from books and magazines: flowers, birds, butterflies, arms, legs and noses, for example, are worked into dazzling patterns that spread over the surface of the painting like a beautiful virus or growth.
Tomaselli sees his paintings and their compendium of data as windows into a surreal, hallucinatory universe. “It is my ultimate aim”, he says, “to seduce and transport the viewer in to space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of that seduction.” Tomaselli has also incorporated allegorical figures into his work – in Untitled (Expulsion) (2000), for example, he borrows the Adam and Eve figures from Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1426-27), and in Field Guides (2003) he creates his own version of the grim reaper. His figures are described anatomically so that their organs and veins are exposed in the manner of a scientific drawing. He writes that his “inquiry into utopia/dystopia – framed by artifice but motivated by the desire for the real – has turned out to be the primary subject of my work”.
Tomaselli grew up in Southern California, where what he has described as “artificial, immersive, theme park reality” was a normal part of everyday life and the idea of a “contaminated” image – one that is Post-modern in its borrowing from both high and low culture – permeates his work.
Fred Tomaselli was born in Santa Monica, California in 1956. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Open Ends’, MoMA, New York (2000), the Berlin Biennale (2001), the Liverpool Biennial (2002), the Whitney Biennial (2004), the 5th Site Santa Fe Biennial (2004) and ‘Ecstasy’, LA MoCA (2006). Solo exhibitions include Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (1999), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida (2001), Site Santa Fe, New Mexico (2001), Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York (2003), Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2004), IMMA, Dublin (2005) and The Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts (2005).
More on Fred Tomaselli
| Artworks | |
 | II 4 Images |
 | Related Texts |
| CV | |
| Bibliography | |
| Transcendence is Pop by James Rondeau | |
| Through a Window, Darkly by Dan Cameron | |
| Exhibitions | |
| Monsters of Paradise 9 Dec—22 Jan 2005 | |
| New work 30 May—7 Jul 2001 | |
| Editions | |
| Orioles Edition of 100 | |
| Artist's Publications | |
| Monsters of Paradise 2004 | |
 | Related Links |
| http://www.albrightknox.org... Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York | |
| http://fruitmarket.co.uk/im... Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh | |
| http://www.modernart.ie/en/... Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin | |
| http://www.jamescohan.com/a... James Cohan Gallery, New York | |
| http://www.sitesantafe.org/... Site Santa Fe, New Mexico | |
 | Back to Artist Index |