Fred Tomaselli

James Cohan is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Fred Tomaselli, on view from October 23 through November 21 at 48 Walker Street. This is the artist's sixth solo exhibition with James Cohan and his first major presentation of new paintings in New York since 2014. The gallery will host an all-day, limited-capacity opening reception with the artist on Saturday, October 24 that adheres to state COVID-19 safety guidelines. Please click here to book an appointment. 

Please click here to explore the exhibition in our Viewing Room. 

Since the early 1990’s, Fred Tomaselli has created multimedia paintings which explode in mesmerizing and hallucinatory patterns. Their various components—organic matter from his garden, collaged elements from printed sources, and hand-painted fauna and ornament—are all suspended in layers of clear, polished resin. There is always a suggestion of transformation in the materials encapsulated in resin, creating a tension between the dynamism of the image and the stasis of its medium. 

The eight new paintings on view in this exhibition represent the first major body of work to marry Tomaselli’s resin paintings with his ongoing New York Times collages. Tomaselli’s interest in newsprint as material has become an extended exploration into the power of news media to shape and reshape our perceptions of reality. Conceptually, these fragments of media are similar to the psychoactive and psychedelic drugs he terms “reality modification devices,” which were prevalent in his work throughout the 1990’s and noticeably absent from this recent work. Tomaselli has traded one sort of buzz for another, replacing pills with text and headlines pulled directly from The New York Times. 
 

Tina Rivers Ryan, PhD, Assistant Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, has written an essay, “High Times,” to accompany the exhibition. Please click here to read the full text.