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Fred Tomaselli's Magical Surrealism
Working with pills, plants, and even pot, Fred Tomaselli’s psychedelic collages and paintings take flight in a new show in Aspen.
Fred Tomaselli’s art is an accumulation of collaged body parts, pills, pot, and paint. Images of mouths, fingers, and breasts—along with clippings of snakes, flowers, and birds—are culled from printed matter and then juxtaposed with leaves of grass, pharmaceuticals, and painted forms to create epic allegories and hypnotic abstractions. Bound in multiple layers of clear resin, these plucked elements come together to portray tantric gods, personal galaxies, and visions of paradise. Now, 40 of the artist’s paintings and works on paper have been gathered together for a survey show at the Aspen Art Museum, which is on view through October 11.
CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW A GALLERY
“All of my work has been heavily influenced by my growing up near Disneyland, at the heart of Southern California’s theme-park culture,” Tomaselli once told an interviewer. “In my youth, I was pretty much a ne’er-do-well stoner mallrat.” After graduating from California State University, Fullerton in 1982, he began making installations that dealt with perceptions of light and space by presenting a lo-tech trippy view of the cosmos. He exhibited these works in a number of local group shows, including the ironically titled Crap, organized by the infamous L.A. artist Paul McCarthy. Then in 1985, at age 29, Tomaselli packed his bags and moved to Brooklyn, where he became an early settler in the soon-to-be thriving artist’s community of Williamsburg.
Over the past 24 years, Tomaselli has established an international art career—exhibiting with high profile galleries, such as Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles, Anne de Villepoix in Paris, James Cohan in New York, and London’s White Cube. His work has also been celebrated in solo shows at numerous institutions, including the Whitney Museum of Art, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, and Dublin’s Irish Museum of Modern Art; acquired by major collectors, and critically praised.
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Paul Laster is the editor of Artkrush.com, a contributing editor at Flavorpill.com and Art Asia Pacific, and a contributing writer at Time Out New York and Art in America.
great stuff yes!
Incredible color and intensity.
Surrealism?
I think that word doesn't mean what you think it means.
surrealism.
a style of art and literature developed principally in the 20th century, stressing the subconscious or nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions, etc.
-from dictionary.com
There no mention of the various drugs he ingested while working this 'art', which evidently were not white aspirin, antacid, saccharin, ephedrine, and acetaminophen or even pot.
I liked Portrait of Laura.
I liked the pill wheels and hang over.
Thank you.
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