Beverly FISHMAN -

Galerie Richard, New York is pleased to announce a new series of visually provocative abstractions by Beverly Fishman.  Her ongoing body of work explores the fast evolving relationship between our bodies and contemporary technology. Fishman’s vibrantly colored paintings and sculptures have their genesis in diverse patterns and iconography drawn from scientific imaging systems and pharmaceutical packaging. By manipulating and layering these representational traces of the body into dense, psychedelic compositions, Fishman raises questions about the vulnerability of human identity in an increasingly digitized and electronically-mediated world.

Fishman’s Pill Spill, is an installation of 90 unique glass capsule forms that take their cue from mood-altering drugs.  Each of the hand blown elements juxtapose multiple patterns, surfaces, and hues into an arresting spectacle. Pill Spill first took form as an installation of 120 capsules in the Toledo Museum of Art earlier this year, installed in dialogue with the architecture of the museum’s Glass Pavilion. ** At Galerie Richard, the capsules are reconfigured to underscore the viewer’s personal relationship to pharmaceuticals. These tantalizing yet paradoxical medications—glass capsules that won’t dissolve—remind us that medicine can be both a cure and a poison.

Also on display are Beverly Fishman’s paintings which are configurations of horizontal panels of polished stainless steel.  Each panel contains dense visual fields woven from neural imagery, sounds waves, EEG graphs and other technological data. These accumulate into optically dazzling moiré patterns that are interrupted by images of drug capsules and molecular symbols. Painted in enamel on mirrored metal, the dynamic surfaces mingle with the reflections of spectators in the surrounding environment, allowing us to view our own fractured image in the multiple panels. The “Dividose” paintings, so named for multi-tab pills designed for user-controlled dosages, evoke what art historian and imaging theorist Barbara Maria Stafford has called “a frenzied inscape. . . that captures both the effect and the seduction of such mood-altering substances. These works are what they represent: stimulants.” *

Beverly Fishman has had four solo exhibitions at Galerie Richard in Paris between 2004 and 2011 and has been regularly presented by the gallery in European and American international art fairs. She has exhibited internationally and has garnered numerous honors including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Last year she received the Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work is in many public collections including the Columbus Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Miami Art Museum, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and Toledo Museum of Art.

* Barbara Maria Stafford, Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images, The University of Chicago Press, 2007.

** Pill Spill was created with the generous support of a Guest Artist Pavilion Project Artist Award from the Toledo Museum of Art.