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Artist Biography & Facts
Fred Tomaselli

Fred Tomaselli (Born 1956) is active/lives in New York, California.  Fred Tomaselli is known for Assemblage, botanic abstraction on wood, collage.

A Brooklyn-based artist, Fred Tomaselli is known for large, optical paintings that incorporate substances such as blotter acid, Percodan, Nuprin and "speed."

He first emerged as an artist from the underground punk-rock scene in Los Angeles in the late 1970s.  He came from a drug culture and has transposed the symbolism into his paintings, which he refers to as "eye candy." His goal is to make paintings that do things to your mind.

Tomaselli paints on wooden panels, layering his surfaces with collaged elements that include a range of over-the counter medicines and hallucinogenic pills, to pot leaves or medicinal herbs.  These materials, which are carefully arranged in various patterns that often spiral and explode across the shiny enamelled picture plane from a dense, centrifugal point are suspended under a thick layer of transparent, glassy resin. Tomaselli's gorgeously colored, jewel-like works make reference to the
counter-culture of the 60s   ...  [Displaying 1000 of 1388 characters.]  Artist bio

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.  askART's database currently holds 148 auction lots for Fred Tomaselli (of which 101 auction records sold and 0 are upcoming at auction.)

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Similar artists

.  There are 24 similar (related) artists for Fred Tomaselli available:    Yinka Shonibare,  Anton Henning,  Lari Pittman,  Joel Elias Shapiro,  Glenn Ligon,  Kehinde Wiley,  Stanley Casselman,  Robert Graham,  Cecily Brown,  Caio Fonseca,  Vik Muniz,  Cesar Baldaccini,  Richard Prince,  Robert Alan Bechtle,  Will Cotton,  Eric Fischl,  Julian Schnabel,  Carl Andre,  Mimmo Domenico Rotella,  Mark di Suvero,  Herbert Ferber,  Yves Klein,  Bernar Venet,  Elizabeth Murray



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Facts about Fred Tomaselli

Biography from the Archives of askART

A Brooklyn-based artist, Fred Tomaselli is known for large, optical paintings that incorporate substances such as blotter acid, Percodan, Nuprin and "speed."

He first emerged as an artist from the underground punk-rock scene in Los Angeles in the late 1970s.  He came from a drug culture and has transposed the symbolism into his paintings, which he refers to as "eye candy." His goal is to make paintings that do things to your mind.

Tomaselli paints on wooden panels, layering his surfaces with collaged elements that include a range of over-the counter medicines and hallucinogenic pills, to pot leaves or medicinal herbs.  These materials, which are carefully arranged in various patterns that often spiral and explode across the shiny enamelled picture plane from a dense, centrifugal point are suspended under a thick layer of transparent, glassy resin. Tomaselli's gorgeously colored, jewel-like works make reference to the
counter-culture of the 60s when drug consumption was romantically associated with utopianism.

The artist grew up in Los Angeles, overlooking the grounds of Disney Land, a landscape that is the ultimate blend of the real and the imagined. As a result, artificial, immersive theme park reality became, for the artist, "a normal part of my everyday life".

Source:
White Cube Gallery, London


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