Fred Tomaselli
Embeds pills, leaves and cut-out eyes in resin, and builds them into hallucinatory patterns.
Fred Tomaselli was born in Santa Monica in 1956, grew up beside Disneyland, and has worked in Brooklyn since the 1980s. The paintings are built up on panel from collaged photographic fragments — eyes, hands, birds, flowers cut from field guides and magazines — together with real pharmaceuticals, cannabis leaves, insects and pigment, then sealed under many poured layers of clear resin so the whole thing lies under glassy depth. He also makes altered front pages of the New York Times, painting over the photograph while leaving the headline in place.
The resin panels are unusual objects and their condition is the practical question: poured resin yellows over time, is prone to scratching and to internal bubbling, and cannot be refinished without disturbing the embedded material, so light history and surface condition weigh heavily. The presence of controlled substances in some earlier works raises its own questions for international shipping and should be established before a sale is arranged. The New York Times works on paper and the print editions are the accessible part of the output.
If you own a work by Fred Tomaselli
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