Fred Tomaselli
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Fred Tomaselli (born in Santa Monica, California in 1956) is best known for his highly detailed paintings on wood panels, combining an array of unorthodox materials suspended in a thick layer of clear, epoxy resin. Tomaselli is represented by the legendary White Cube gallery in the UK and the James Cohan Gallery in USA.
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[edit] Growing Up
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.
[edit] The Art of Tomaselli
Tomaselli's paintings include medicinal herbs, prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants alongside images cut from books and magazines: flowers, birds, butterflies, arms, legs and noses, which are combined 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”.[1]
[edit] Trivia
- Tomaselli designed the front cover artwork for Laura Cantrell's third album 'Humming by the Flowered Vine' on Matador Records.
- His painting, 'Gravity In Four Directions', was also used as partial cover artwork for The Magnetic Fields' album 'i'.
[edit] Selected Solo Exhibitions
- The Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts (2005)
- IMMA, Dublin (2005)
- Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2004)
- Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York (2003)
- White Cube, London (2001)
- Site Santa Fe, New Mexico (2001)
- Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida (2001)
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (1999)
[edit] Selected Group Exhibitions
- ‘Ecstasy’, LA MoCA (2006)
- Whitney Biennial (2004)
- 5th Site Santa Fe Biennial (2004)
- Liverpool Biennial (2002)
- Berlin Biennale (2001)
- ‘Open Ends’, MoMA, New York (2000)
