Fred Tomaselli

About

Fred Tomaselli (born 1956) is an American artist best known for his highly detailed paintings that combine actual pharmaceutical pills, hallucinogenic plants, and medicinal herbs with collaged images from books and magazines, all suspended in layers of clear, polished resin.[1] Growing up in Southern California near Disneyland during the 1960s and 1970s, Tomaselli was profoundly influenced by psychedelic culture, LSD experiences, and the artificiality of suburban American escapism. He began embedding actual drugs into his artwork in 1989, initially inspired by witnessing friends dying of AIDS and taking masses of pills, which led him to explore how drugs had transformed from agents of enlightenment to tools of survival.[5] Tomaselli's artistic practice evolved from early installations about escapism and theme parks to geometric abstractions with embedded pills around 1991, where he conceptualized the pills as traveling through viewers' eyeballs rather than bloodstreams to alter consciousness.[2] His work functions as both a lens focusing attention on social and cultural realities and a mirror inviting viewers to recognize their connection to the wider world.[3] Beyond psychedelic imagery, Tomaselli's practice draws from diverse influences including Asian art, German Romanticism, Pop, and Conceptualism, creating what he describes as physical, historical, and stylistic hybrids that reflect a mind conceptually and perceptually altered by hallucinogenic experiences.[5] Tomaselli's concerns extend to contemporary issues including climate change, California forest fires, the COVID-19 pandemic, and systemic racism.[3] He has held solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art and James Cohan Gallery in New York, White Cube in London, and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo.[1] Currently based in Brooklyn, Tomaselli continues to create mesmerizing scenes that bend reality while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of visual seduction.

Psychedelic art combining pharmaceutical pills, hallucinogenic plants, medicinal herbs, and collaged imagery suspended in resin; explores altered states of consciousness, escapism, utopianism, and the artificiality of suburban American culture