Beverly FISHMAN - Pharmako

Press release

Galerie Richard is pleased to present a personal exhibition by Beverly Fishman entitled Pharmako Series from September 3 to 27, 2011. The artist is showing for the first time in Europe a set of luminous sculptures as well as new paintings on metal in flamboyant colors. His work is unique in the appropriation of an abstract language derived from science to deal with the human body.

“Pharmako represents a broad spectrum of pills, over-the-counter drugs, prescription drugs as well as street drugs. The shapes of the pill sculptures are designed to affect the viewer in daylight as well as in the dark. As expansive in their colorations as the effects of their real-life counterparts, Fishman’s drugs calm, attract or seduce the viewer promising happiness and protection. Legal and illegal drugs are mixed in the installation to emphasize the fact that, like multinational pharmaceutical companies, drug traffickers rely on logos and brands to build and maintain a loyal customer base”(1).

A room closed with black curtains is devoted to this sculptural ensemble. One becomes fully aware of the variety of external forms and the importance of the internal logos of each drug representation. These pills are scattered disparately from floor to ceiling on all four walls of the room. In daylight the resin pills form a very festive and playful multicolored ensemble. When the light goes out, the viewer discovers that the sculptures then radiate red, green and blue lights, creating a magical luminous space. The resin absorbs daylight, stores it and releases it at night. Each sculpture is unique and sold separately, allowing you to create your own wall installation by choosing several. Pharmako Series raises fundamental issues such as over-prescribing and addiction to legal or illegal drugs.

The exhibition will also present several paintings on metal which often take up the symbols of medicines and which release positive colored energies. In the paintings from 2003 to today we discover all the iconographic richness of the artist. In addition to the patterns of drug logos, there are other abstract patterns such as electrocardiograms and electroencephalograms, molecular structures of drug components, circuitry of computer components, and DNA structures with two helical chains. The large paintings are made up of an assembly of several horizontal panels, thus joining the spirit of his sculptural works. Like a medication, his works of art are a multi-component whole.

“Our need to reconcile technology and humanity is a major concern that generates ethical, legal, spiritual debates, specific to our time. Beverly Fishman’s art foregrounds this modern crisis of identity whose paintings engage us with critical questions that confront us with our individuality and our technology-dependent culture”(2).

Beverly Fishman will have a personal exhibition at Galerie Richard, in New York in December 2011. She is currently invited by the Toledo Museum, Ohio, to create her first glass sculptures. The Pharmako series was exhibited by Galerie Richard at Pulse New York in 2010. Beverly Fishman produced a mural installation for the VIP lounge at Art Basel Miami 2009, which was exhibited and acquired by the Miami Art Museum in 2010.

(1): text by Matthew Biro for Pulse N Y 2009. Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

(2): text by Joe Houston from the book ”Beverly Fishman”, Collection the Cranbrook monographs, 2003