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Lot Essay
Fred Tomaselli's Breathing Man conjures the mind-bending revelations about the interconnectedness of all things that one experiences under the influence of psychotropic drugs. Concentric rings of birds, insects, flowers and leaves radiate like particles of matter from a disembodied head composed of anatomic illustrations and multiplied body parts. Together they form a kind of organic mandala that re-establishes the ancient cosmological myths that bond us with the universe. Breathing Man is an intricate and laboriously crafted painting built from hundreds of collaged images embalmed within layers of clear epoxy resin. Tomaselli has carefully preserved the individuality of each component, using them as building blocks of the larger composition that encourages the eye to shift from macro to micro and back again. Adding new details to each strata of resin,and including flourishes of acrylic paint, he achieves an effect of depth which, combined with the richness of color and a highly decorative graphic style, serves to produce a beautiful, almost psychedelic outcome.
When asked once why his paintings look hallucinatory, Tomaselli replied that he likes complexity, and that he wants the viewer to feel like it is impossible to get to the bottom of the thing they are looking at. The West Coast raised former surf-punk also acknowledges that his own mind has been colonized by encounters with drugs, and that his work seeks to enact a similar experience for the observer. "You know Aldous Huxley talked about this notion of the doors of perception..." he explains, "he felt that the mind sort of eliminated extraneous information in order for us to focus on survival and that hallucinogens or entheogens opened up the doors of perception. But in a way, when those doors were fully opened it was so confusing, it was so much information, that we couldn't navigate, that there was a sort of behavioral adaptation that our minds had made that had closed those doors down. So I like just opening those doors up and putting as much information as possible" (H. Sparks, "Interview with artist Fred Tomaselli," The Story Collider, 17 February, 2011, at https://storycollider.org/podcast/2011-02-17).
Tomaselli's practice traffics in ideas about escapism, the sublime and altered consciousness--rhetoric familiar to both art and drug culture. He maintains a healthy scepticism about the utopian ideals presented by both these worlds but he nonetheless revels in the seductive beauty of his image constructions. More than the sum of its parts, Breathing Man is a highly seductive and deeply philosophical inquiry on the nexus of nature, space and the human mind.
When asked once why his paintings look hallucinatory, Tomaselli replied that he likes complexity, and that he wants the viewer to feel like it is impossible to get to the bottom of the thing they are looking at. The West Coast raised former surf-punk also acknowledges that his own mind has been colonized by encounters with drugs, and that his work seeks to enact a similar experience for the observer. "You know Aldous Huxley talked about this notion of the doors of perception..." he explains, "he felt that the mind sort of eliminated extraneous information in order for us to focus on survival and that hallucinogens or entheogens opened up the doors of perception. But in a way, when those doors were fully opened it was so confusing, it was so much information, that we couldn't navigate, that there was a sort of behavioral adaptation that our minds had made that had closed those doors down. So I like just opening those doors up and putting as much information as possible" (H. Sparks, "Interview with artist Fred Tomaselli," The Story Collider, 17 February, 2011, at https://storycollider.org/podcast/2011-02-17).
Tomaselli's practice traffics in ideas about escapism, the sublime and altered consciousness--rhetoric familiar to both art and drug culture. He maintains a healthy scepticism about the utopian ideals presented by both these worlds but he nonetheless revels in the seductive beauty of his image constructions. More than the sum of its parts, Breathing Man is a highly seductive and deeply philosophical inquiry on the nexus of nature, space and the human mind.