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Through complexly layered compositions that use high-gloss resin encasings, Fred Tomaselli’s intricately detailed paintings combine a variety of hybrid objects—from plants to pills—with cut-out images from fashion magazines, medical texts, and ornithological guide books. A reflection on artificial or overmediated realities—in particular, those induced by street drugs and over-the-counter or controlled pharmaceuticals—his work engages visually oversaturated beholders where they live and thus offers a kind of critique of their overstimulated visual appetites. His generation of a profusion of images works to transform the banal into the ecstatic. Venues at which Tomaselli has had solo exhibitions include the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen (Colorado, USA); White Cube, Mason’s Yard in London; and James Cohan Gallery in New York City. Group exhibitions include such venues as Prospect.1 New Orleans in New Orleans (Louisiana, USA); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the 2004 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the 2002 Liverpool Biennial in Liverpool (UK); and the 2nd Berlin Biennial.
