Flaco, February 25, 2024, 2024

Since 2005, Tomaselli has engaged in an ongoing body of works on paper that transforms the front page of The New York Times. Like his resin paintings–with which they have become increasingly intertwined–the Times collages are the product of a friction between the escapist impulse of artmaking and the crises of the world beyond the studio walls. The surreal compositions are ruminations on the absurdity of news cycles and provide the artist a space to respond to a variety of issues, from political squabbles to a global pandemic or a story of local heroism. As Tomaselli notes, “I think that maybe the Times collages are quietly political, in that I can riff on anything I want, while the horrors of the world become the background buzz. Maybe I’m saying that the world may be going to hell, but I still keep painting.”

Tomaselli said of his newest print, "watching Flaco flying free in Central Park was extra thrilling, coming as it did, not long after covid lockdowns were lifted. Somehow a crazy story of a “liberated” owl became the embodiment of a sense of regained freedom. But more than that, Flaco was beautiful and alert. We thought we were looking at him but he was also looking at us.”

Fred Tomaselli has often courted controversy with his use of unconventional materials including consciousness-altering plants and pills. "I want people to get lost in the work," says the artist. "In that way the work is pre-Modernist. I throw all of my obsessions and loves into the work, and I try not to be too embarrassed about any of it." The results look like part patterned-textile, part mosaic. They depict subjects from the natural world, such as birds and flowers, with lush, jewel-colored tones. His recent hybrid works are all about recycling images from the outside world, usually downloaded off of the Internet, to create heavily patterned, hallucinatory universes of his own making.

In 2009, Prestel published the comprehensive book Fred Tomaselli, which accompanied a survey show of his work from the past 25 years.

Click here to read more about Fred Tomaselli's dazzling, dizzying art.

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