Exhibitions: Fred Tomaselli

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  April 30, 2010: Fred Tomaselli, a mid-career survey featuring the artist’s two-dimensional works from the late 1980s to the present, will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from October 8, 2010, through January 2, 2011. This exhibition focuses on the trajectory of Tomaselli’s career, from early experiments with photograms and collage to recent paintings and prints that combine abstraction with allusions to current events. Fred Tomaselli includes more than forty artworks and will feature collages and paintings created specifically for the Brooklyn Museum’s presentation.
  
  Tomaselli’s work reveals a uniquely American vision that celebrates the psychedelic and the alternative. Growing up near the desert in southern California, Tomaselli was influenced by both the manufactured reality of theme parks and the music and drug countercultures of Los Angeles in the 1970s and ’80s. His distinctive melding of these influences forms an updated, personalized, folk-driven vision of the American West.
  
  An avid and idiosyncratic collector who is interested in botany and ornithology, Tomaselli amasses prescription pills, hallucinogenic plants, and other drugs, along with images of plants, flowers, birds, and anatomical illustrations carefully cut from books. Pulling from this visual archive, he creates richly decorated surfaces that are composed of hundreds of found images. Combining these unusual materials and paint under layers of clear epoxy resin, Tomaselli’s highly stylized artworks merge the printed image or the photographic image with areas painted by hand.
  
  A few of the earlier paintings in the exhibition reference Minimalism, such as Black and White All Over (1993), in which Tomaselli laboriously organized rows and columns of prescription pills. Other early works experimented with the photographic, like Portrait of John (1995), in which Tomaselli used a photogram, an image made by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material, to create an astrological map loosely based off the drug history of his subject. Other highlights include Avian Flower Serpent (2006), a large, intimidating bird clutching a snake against an exploding background of painted and collaged imagery; Super Plant (1994), an image of the tree of life painstakingly created with plant matter; and Untitled (2000), a depiction of Adam and Eve being expelled from heaven with a large psychedelic nucleus radiating in the background.
  
  Fred Tomaselli emerged in the California art scene creating installations and performance art in the early 1980s. In 1986, he moved to New York, where he was one of the pioneering artists of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tomaselli’s work has been shown extensively worldwide, in both galleries and museums, from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the White Cube gallery in London. He continues to live and work in Brooklyn.
  
  This exhibition is organized by the Aspen Art Museum and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is coordinated by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.
  
  The Brooklyn Museum is the third and final venue for Fred Tomaselli. The exhibition originated at the Aspen Art Museum (August 1–October 11, 2009) and then travelled to The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (February 6–June 6, 2010).
  

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  August 31, 2010: Fred Tomaselli, a mid-career survey featuring the artist’s two-dimensional works from the late 1980s to the present, will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from October 8, 2010, through January 2, 2011. This exhibition focuses on the trajectory of Tomaselli’s career, from early experiments with photograms and collage to recent paintings and prints that combine abstraction with allusions to current events. Fred Tomaselli includes more than forty artworks and will feature collages and paintings created specifically for the Brooklyn Museum’s presentation.
  
  Tomaselli’s work reveals a uniquely American vision that celebrates the psychedelic and the alternative. Growing up near the desert in southern California, Tomaselli was influenced by both the manufactured reality of theme parks and the music counterculture of Los Angeles in the 1970s and ’80s. His distinctive melding of these influences forms an updated, personalized, folk-driven vision of the American West.
  
  An avid and idiosyncratic collector who is interested in botany and ornithology, Tomaselli amasses prescription pills, along with images of plants, flowers, birds, and anatomical illustrations carefully cut from books. Pulling from this visual archive, he creates richly decorated surfaces that are composed of hundreds of found images. Combining these unusual materials and paint under layers of clear epoxy resin, Tomaselli’s highly stylized artworks merge the printed or photographic image with areas painted by hand.
  
  A few of the earlier paintings in the exhibition reference Minimalism, such as Black and White All Over (1993), in which Tomaselli laboriously organized rows and columns of prescription pills. Other early works experimented with the photographic, like Portrait of John (1995), in which Tomaselli used a photogram, an image made by placing objects directly on the surface of a photo-sensitive material to create an astrological map loosely based on the drug history of his subject. Other highlights include Avian Flower Serpent (2006), a large, intimidating bird clutching a snake against an exploding background of painted and collaged imagery; Super Plant (1994), an image of the tree of life painstakingly created with plant matter; and Untitled (2000), a depiction of Adam and Eve being expelled from heaven with a large psychedelic nucleus radiating in the background.
  
  The two artworks specifically created for this exhibition, Night Music for Raptors and Starling, are large-scale painting collages that continue Tomaselli’s recent exploration of individual birds. The former represents an owl composed of hundreds of cut-out eyes while the latter depicts the head of a starling set against an exuberantly brushed background. Also included in this exhibition for their U.S. debut is a group of twelve recently created works on paper. With gouache and collage, Tomaselli transforms the front page of The New York Times and uses it as a backdrop for his pictorial interventions.
  
  Fred Tomaselli emerged in the California art scene creating installations and performance art in the early 1980s. In 1986, he moved to New York, where he was one of the pioneering artists of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His work has been shown extensively worldwide, in both galleries and museums, from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. He continues to live and work in Brooklyn.
  
  This exhibition is organized and toured by the Aspen Art Museum and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is coordinated by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.
  
  Bloomberg is the presenting sponsor.
  
  Bloomberg is the world’s most trusted source of information for financial professionals and businesses. Bloomberg combines innovative technology with unmatched analytic, data, news, display and distribution capabilities, to deliver critical information via the Bloomberg Professional service and multimedia platforms, which span television, radio, digital and print.
  
  The exhibition has also received support from Sotheby’s; Glenstone; James Cohan Gallery; Susan and Leonard Feinstein Foundation; White Cube, London; Amanda and Glenn Fuhrman; Amy and John Phelan; Mickey Cartin; Greg Feldman and Melanie Shorin; Scott and Meg Mueller; and other generous donors.
  
  The Village Voice is media sponsor.
  
  The Brooklyn Museum is the third and final venue for Fred Tomaselli. The exhibition originated in the Aspen Art Museum (August 1–October 11, 2009) and then went to The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (February 6–June 6, 2010).
  

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Press Coverage of this Exhibition

• THE NEW SEASON | ART; Dalí, Richter and Houdini in Chains!September 12, 2010 By KAREN ROSENBERG"Dates and touring sites are subject to change. SEPTEMBER FISH FORMS: LAMPS BY FRANK GEHRY Eight lamps and other works by the 81-year-old starchitect reveal an interest in piscine imagery. Through Oct. 31 at the Jewish Museum, Manhattan; (212) 423-3200, jewishmuseum.org. GABRIEL KURI The museum mounts a 10-year survey of this Mexico City artist,..."
• ART REVIEW; Picturing a Mind-Blowing World Made of DrugsOctober 8, 2010 By KEN JOHNSON"Is cosmic consciousness for real? I mean, if you have a religious vision, do you perceive a truly existing, transcendental dimension that is hidden from everyday awareness? Or is mystic revelation the illusory product of unusual neurochemical activity in your brain? Such philosophical questions took on a pragmatic import for millions of people in..."
• The ListingsOctober 15, 2010 "Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums American Folk Art Museum: 'The Private Collection of Henry Darger,' through Oct. 24. This revelatory exhibition proposes, unconvincingly, that the self-taught, reclusive eccentric Henry Darger was an art collector. It..."
• The ListingsOctober 22, 2010 "Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums - Asia Society Museum: 'Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool,' through Jan. 2. This Japanese artist, known for paintings and sculptures of big-eyed toddlers and friendly dogs redolent of children's books, makes over the entire..."
• The ListingsOctober 29, 2010 "Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums - Asia Society Museum: 'Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool,' through Jan. 2. This Japanese artist, known for paintings and sculptures of big-eyed toddlers and friendly dogs redolent of children's books, makes over the entire..."
• The ListingsNovember 5, 2010 "Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums - Asia Society Museum: 'Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool,' through Jan. 2. This Japanese artist, known for paintings and sculptures of big-eyed toddlers and friendly dogs redolent of children's books, makes over the entire..."