via: fishman
Notes:
Beverly Fishman’s art process brings geometric abstraction into close contact with the body, medicine, and consumer culture. Beginning with research into pharmaceutical forms, she develops collages that explore the interaction of pill-shaped fragments, color, and negative space. These preliminary arrangements become a means of testing how familiar medical objects can acquire unfamiliar emotional associations. Her process is particularly effective because the compositions operate on two levels: they offer the immediate pleasure of abstract design while suggesting the bodily conditions and vulnerabilities behind their source material. www.milesmcenery.com
Fishman’s translation of collage into urethane-painted wooden reliefs introduces a tension between intuitive experimentation and carefully controlled production. Working with fabrication and paint specialists, she achieves smooth surfaces that minimize evidence of the artist’s hand. Yet her continued adjustment of color relationships at full scale reveals how much perceptual judgment remains within this collaborative process. The industrial finish strengthens the work’s connection to manufactured desire, suggesting how pharmaceutical products communicate reassurance through appearance. At the same time, this refinement presents a critical challenge: the paintings’ visual appeal can overshadow their questioning of the systems they reference. www.milesmcenery.com
The spatial dimension of Fishman’s process makes her work especially compelling. Shaped supports, beveled edges, and reflected neon color extend the paintings beyond their front surfaces, allowing the wall to participate in the viewer’s experience. Their apparent glow gives the objects a hovering quality that can feel simultaneously comforting and artificial. This ambiguity is a strength: Fishman allows attraction and unease to coexist without resolving them into a simple judgment about medicine. Her process demonstrates how color, surface, and physical structure can turn abstraction into a thoughtful examination of the promises attached to bodily and emotional well-being.
- RJG//AI