Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/ShanghaiFred Tomaselli’s “Hang Over,” 2005, one of the artist’s collages that incorporates pharmaceutical pills. Another work by Tomaselli is for sale in the Paddle8 auction to benefit the Drug Policy Alliance.Among drug advocates, there are your average stoners and there are gurus who proselytize about consciousness-expanding substances — people like Timothy Leary, who was branded “the most dangerous man in America.” That label came from President Richard Nixon, whose “war on drugs” persists: in 2011, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, more than 1.5 million Americans were arrested on nonviolent drug charges.
Last week the D.P.A. and Paddle8, an online auction house, hosted a talk by the artist Fred Tomaselli. The event was linked to a Paddle8 sale, now accepting bids, that will benefit the D.P.A, and which features many artworks that visualize or allude to drug use. (The sale includes work by such artists as Louise Lawler, Chris Martin, Marilyn Minter and Swoon, and will end with a live auction on March 4 at C24 gallery in Chelsea.) Tomaselli, who contributed a piece, was a natural choice: his trippy paintings incorporating psychoactive substances have earned him a reputation as the art world’s “drug guy.”
Courtesy of D.P.A., the artist and Salon 94Marilyn Minter’s “Ball Spitter” is up for auction at Paddle8.In some ways, however, Tomaselli seems a poor fit for the role; a modest presence, he began his talk by clarifying that his art is “not so much about drugs — it’s about perception.” But as he recounted his attempts to “containerize the infinite” in paintings of the night sky, or rhapsodized about the “parallel reality” opened up as he observed birds through binoculars, the guru in him emerged: “I want people to take a trip in my work, just like painters before modernism did.”
Born in 1956, Tomaselli came of age as “the hippie dream was crashing.” After initially being influenced by punk rock, he abandoned its stripped-down aesthetic as he attempted to visualize elaborate phenomena,
like synesthesia. While that turn toward a more decorative style produced vivid, florid results, Tomaselli believes that much of his work is “just a way of organizing information.” If that sounds like a restrained
explanation, the resulting collages — made with things like pills, psychoactive leaves and flowers — are anything but. In an intricate, often obsessive manner, they reframe cultural data and countercultural
references into mesmerizing images. Aesthetically stunning, they tantalize the senses all the more as they evoke the experiences afforded by their mind-altering materials.
Bids are being accepted at paddle8.com/auctions/dpa.