Beschreibung:

Fred Tomaselli Butterfly Effect 1999 Acrylic, Aspirin tablets, paper collage, and resin on wooden panel. 60 x 84 x 1 1/5 in. (152.4 x 213.4 x 3 cm). Signed, titled and dated “Fred Tomaselli 1999 Butterfly Effect” on the reverse.
Provenance Galerie Gebauer, Berlin Exhibited Berlin, Galerie Gebauer, Fred Tomaselli April 10 – May 15, 1999 Literature J. Rondeau and F. Tomaselli, eds., Fred Tomaselli Berlin, 1999, n.p. (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “I came of age at a time when drugs and art seemed to hold the promise of revolution, or at the very least, progress. But, mind-expansion has given way to addiction, and the modernist spirit has congealed into post-modern stasis. We seem to have segued cold turkey from the Age of Aquarius to The New Sobriety. However, the urge to be transported remains fundamental to human experience, whether the vehicle is drugs, art, entertainment, sex, or religion. “My work aims to be escapist while simultaneously exploring the perceptual and cultural mechanics of escapism. I use drugs other reality-modifiers as materials for art in order to make the cultural use of the art object its own subject. I want to open wide the window of painting and let the viewer travel as far as the limitations of non-electronic visual art will allow. Towards this end, I aim for truth and beauty, for pleasure, for seduction. “It might be said that I effectively destroy their physio- and psychoactive properties by encasing drugs in resin, but I prefer to interpret the process as a re-routing of the path that these reality modifiers take to the brain. Instead of entering the bloodstream as chemicals, they enter though the eyeballs as art,” (Fred Tomaselli quoted in “Art, Drugs, and Transportation”, Christopher Grimes Gallery Press Release, New York, 1993). Read More