Fred Tomaselli is best known for his meticulous, seductive paintings made with unorthodox materials suspended in thick layers of clear, epoxy resin. These materials have included medicinal herbs, prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants, and images cut from books and magazines: flowers, birds, butterflies, arms, legs and noses, and are arranged in busy, carefully-crafted mosaic-type patterns. Tomaselli sees his paintings and their compendium of data as windows into a surreal, hallucinatory universe, “It is my ultimate aim”, he says, “to seduce and transport the viewer into space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of that seduction.” Recently he has also written that his investigations may be seen as an “inquiry into utopia/dystopia – framed by artifice but motivated by the desire for the real – (which) has turned out to be the primary subject of my work”. He is represented by the White Cube gallery in the UK and the James Cohan Gallery in the USA. His paintings have been the subject of museum and gallery exhibitions world-wide.Image: Echo, Wow and Flutter 2000; leaves, pills, photocollage, acrylic, resin on wood panel Collection: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Copyright the artist/Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai
