Exhibition Review: Fred Tomaselli Invites Viewers to Take a Second Look
© FRED TOMASELLI, March 10, 2020, 2020. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery
By Micaela Bahn
A photographic collage is more than a visual object that lies flat, still, and breathless. When photographs are placed in conjunction with other materials, they become like words strung together into sentences that can speak about the world. This type of dialogue is critical to the work of painter and collagist Fred Tomaselli, whose new solo exhibition is on view at the James Cohan Gallery from October 23rd through November 21st.
Tomaselli established himself as an artist through exquisitely detailed collages that depict surreal scenes and frequently traffic in the discordant realm of utopia. His kaleidoscopic paintings contain an array of components— pills, organic matter, printed sources, acrylic ornament, and photographs—that are arranged on wood panels and held together beneath glistening layers of resin. While he continues to use unorthodox materials in this new body of work, his signature illicit substances are replaced by newspaper clippings and headlines. “My work has always been a chemical cocktail,” Tomaselli notes, “and when I got rid of the kind of pharmaceutical chemicals, I guess I made up for it by using more and more of the buzz of the media.”
© FRED TOMASELLI, March 19, 2020, 2020. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery
The shift in material has created a collection that toes the line between illusion and representation. As visitors walk through the gallery, they find that the artist’s beautifully absurd images reckon with an equally absurd world. Many of these collages were made during quarantine and are reconstructions of the New York Times front page. In one, he pulls the headline, “Job Losses Soar; U.S. Virus Cases Top World” and pastes beneath it the image of three doctors in PPE as they reach into a dizzying void of hand-painted concentric circles. Newspaper clippings thematically harmonize with the role that pills once played in Tomaselli’s art. The incessant media buzz of a destabilized nation works on human perception in a way akin to how narcotics draw the user into an altered reality. The artist pushes his viewer to do a second or even third take, in order to fully engage with the intricate narrative that he presents.
© FRED TOMASELLI, March 16, 2020, 2020. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery
Other collages in the gallery allow for an escape into the surreal, where the entropic patterns that swirl across the frame are more stabilizing than surrounding news pieces. Delirium abounds in the collection’s beauty and chaos. Tomaselli has stated that, “The New York Times collages are quietly political.” Perhaps they are quiet to the artist, but the media excerpts, which fit effortlessly into his rich forms and photographs, leap with new urgency out of the frame.
This is Tomaselli’s first significant body of work on view in New York since 2016 and the first presentation of paintings in New York since 2014. You can view featured works digitally here or visit the gallery’s Tribeca location.
