Our Collective Vomit

Excerpt

This issue’s cover art features Gyre, 2014 by Fred Tomaselli, a masterful and intricate mixed media piece depicting a fish leaping out of the swelling waters, expelling the contents of its stomach out to the air. Tomaselli’s early work was influenced by the “Light and Space” art movement of 1960s Southern California—one of minimalism and abstract expressionism, characterized by large installations of light, volume, and space. This piece is part of Tomaselli’s later, important body of work that reflects his passion for nature, his experimentation with recreational drugs, and his elaborately detailed technique that draws us in from a distance to lose us within the detail. The pieces he creates are beautiful and bizarre paintings, tapestries mosaics, and quilts. They are finely crafted, dazzling depictions of nature composed of bought and found objects, famously including, in some cases street drugs, controlled substances and natural hallucinogenic drugs built into the body of the work. These elaborate collages have photographic and printed elements, hand-painted details, and layers of clear resin that recreate the hallucinatory experience by layering detail upon detail like an unending fractal. Each layer, every single element exists as itself, and as an equal partner in the final dramatic scene. …