Fred Tomaselli

March 19, 2020, 2020

Gouache, photo collage, and archival inkjet print on watercolor paper

Unframed: 11 x 12 inches (27.9 x 30.5 cm)

Framed: 16 x 17 1/2 inches

Courtesy of the artist and Norr Cohan, New York

Selected by The Drawing Center

For more than two decades, Fred Tomaselli has taken the front page of the New York Times as a point of departure before altering the headlines and reimagining the images with gouache and collage, creating surreal compositions in which aspiration and critique become inseparable. Where the Times formats reality into an authoritative structure—the bold headline, the columns in formation, the photograph above the fold—Tomaselli answers with irregular forms, optical vibration, and a chromatic restlessness that exposes the newspaper's claim to neutrality and truth as the constructions they have always been.

Fred Tomaselli (born 1956, Santa Monica, CA) has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA (2024); Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE (2019); Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA (2018); Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (2016); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2014); University of Michigan Museum of Art that traveled to the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2014); a survey exhibition at Aspen Art Museum (2009) that toured to the Tang Teaching Museum & Art Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (2010); among many others. Tomaselli’s work can be found in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA; and many others.