you could ignore dang cartoons, and you wouldn't turn into prey

If I took 4 tabs of acid,

I would hope to end up in front of a Fred Tomaselli piece.

Fred Tomaselli's paintings collage prescription pills, hallucinogenic plants, herbs, and leaves with repeated images of bugs, butterflies, flower, and various segmented body parts. These separate bits are then placed in swirling patterns spread over the huge wood surfaces. Once collaged, the pieces are covered in a thick layer of clear epoxy resin.

There are common themes in Tomaselli's work. Most of his pieces portray one or more of the following four images: birds, human bodies, trees/flowers, and one of two types of designs -- one resembles loopy tangles of colorful noodles and the other something you might make using Spirograph. But the way that Tomaselli illustrates these subjects is, to be blunt, strange. Each of his pieces are at once provocative, graphic, and, in my opinion, just plain pretty.

What I love most about Tomaselli's work is the attention and seriousness it demands. Whether struck by his use of a melting face with 15+ eyes, colorful psychedelic paisley, or the elaborate muscle tissue created inside of his figures, it's hard to not endlessly stare at these paintings. And they are rather dark, too. While the Tomaselli's patterns are no doubt beautiful and intricate, they appear to virtually infest the pieces and their residing characters. There is a sense of uncontrollable viral diffusion, reflected particularly by the vibrant medley of drugs in each work. The characters are alone in dark expanses, falling, looking out, lost in their environments of diseased chaos.

Tomaselli said, "I want people to get lost in the work. I want to seduce people into it and I want people to escape inside the world of the work" (artinfo).

I'm there.

photo credit:
top: Fred Tomaselli, Hang Over, 2005, leaves, pills, acrylic and resin on wood panel, 84 x 120 inches, Courtesy James Cohan Gallery
left: Fred Tomaselli, Organism, (2005). Mixed media, photo-collage, acrylic, gouache, resin on wood panel painting, 99 x 77 inches
right: Fred Tomaselli, Big Bird, 2004, Mixed media and resin on wood panel, 48 x 48 in, Courtesy White Cube