Fred Tomaselli, Hang Over, 2005, leaves, pills, acrylic and resin on wood panel, 84 x 120 inches, Courtesy James Cohan Gallery

Fred Tomaselli, originally from the West Coast, started as an installation and performance artist with Paul McCarthy and other California artists. This was a reaction to the theme parks and dislocated realities that his Southern California environment created. Tomaselli yearned to create “sublime experiences.” His familiarity with resin as a medium was due to its use in surfboards. So when he decided to switch to painting as his window to another reality, his vehicle of transportation, resin seemed the logical choice because it allowed him to add real objects, such as pills or marijuana leaves, to the work. He believed that instead of altering consciousness through the bloodstream, the viewer’s consciousness would be altered though the eyes.

Over time, a dialogue between nature and technology arose in his work and nature seemed to grow and take over. He always uses imagery and objects based on his own personal interests: at one point drugs, gardening, birds, etc. He moves back and forth between abstraction and representation in his art. His influences range widely from the conceptual art his work grew out of to Islamic art, Abstract Expressionism, the work of Sol Lewitt, German Romanticism, Hudson River School, airbrush van painting, Persian miniatures, Shaker quilts, and Tibetan thangkas. He attempts to have the “-isms” we are all familiar with have an uneasy dialogue in his work. He uses real objects, photographs, and painting in his work to keep the viewer off balance. As his use of geometric abstractions has grown, he claims his work has become more intuitive and spontaneous.

Fred Tomaselli, Big Bird, 2004, acrylic, leaves, resin and printed paper collage on panel 48 x 48 in.

In the two large bird paintings he had hanging for his upcoming White Cube show in London (opening on March 26th) the backgrounds were examples of this expressiveness in his work. He feels that the Abstract Expressionist style of painting is not just about expressing emotion, but also about creating intense emotion in the viewer.

Fred Tomaselli, Guilty, 2005, Print 13 X 13 inches, Edition of 100, Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery

In addition to his paintings on panel he has made photograms by putting pills and sugar on photographic paper and exposing it. Lately he has been using birds’ eyes in his work quite a bit. To him, they resemble planetary bodies. He finds himself going deeper into the details as his work progresses; for example, not just doing bird paintings, but painting an actual bird’s eye. For his works on paper he saves New York Times articles and defaces them with paint because recent articles have made him angry. Other works on paper utilize the grid form with brightly painted sections and were influenced by LSD tabs which usually come in quarter inch perforated squares. Obvious influences of this work are Gerhard Richter and Ellsworth Kelly.

His process is meticulous. He cuts images out, scans them, adjusts the color of them, recuts them, sprays glue on paper and puts them down on the paper to organize them. Images are then archived in flat files so he can use them spontaneously. He uses an exacto knife to move these around. He is not using pills anymore but if he wanted to, he has bottles and bottles of them categorized in drawers in his studio. As an avid gardener he also has access to plants of all kinds. For his large works, he starts with a wood panel, does underpainting, arranges objects or collage imagery (often numbering in the thousands) onto the board which is laid flat. For larger pieces he has a contraption which allows him to be suspended above the work. He applies varnish and repaints certain areas to their original colors. He then uses his pouring platform to apply the 50/50 epoxy resin. For this step he must wear a respirator. He also sometimes uses wooden cut out templates to inlay the pills, objects, etc. After the resin dries which takes a day, he sands it and repeats layers for depth. The final layer is waxed with turtle wax. Through this process the sculptor in him gets to remain alive and working. All the work is handmade by him, he has one studio assistant, and the large pieces take about 6 months to create.

Many questions from the group I was with centered around the drugs he has used in his work but he is adamant that his work “isn’t about drugs, it’s about perception, altering the viewer’s perception.” He feels his work is predicated on the notion of seduction versus the verbal so he uses pattern and ornament. He wants his work to be a place worth going to.

I am lucky enough to own a print of Tomaselli’s that was a gift from my parents. It is definitely a “place worth going to” time and time again.