An artist with over 20 years of research into the pharmaceutical industry, Detroit-based Beverly Fishman is the Head of Painting at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her evolving exploration of glossy, pill-shaped reliefs are created to attract immediate attention, mimicking the vigorous and persuasive tactics used by drug companies and their advertising agents.Color and surface are calibrated for maximum effect. The artist uses hue and texture to destabilize the viewer, with bright contrasts and slight variations that cause optic confusion and palpable disorientation. She paints the edges of her works in bright fluorescents that leave a hovering glow on the gallery wall, a symptomatic and circumstantial buzz that radiates from each specimen. It is by transforming the iconography of medicine and translating it onto the gallery walls that Fishman emphasizes the importance of the pharmaceutical industry in our lives, forcing us to consider our own attraction, revulsion, and dependence.
 

"This print is based on one of the handmade collages that I create in order to try out color and shape combinations for my large scale polychrome reliefs. The shapes are based on pharmaceuticals, while the colors are derived from a variety of different color palettes, both natural and artificial. My polychrome reliefs, which I began to fabricate in wood and urethane paint in 2012, explore our contemporary global condition in which drugs construct and contest our identities." - Beverly Fishman

Beverly Fishman

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