Capsule Concern
Chrysler Museum
Arte Fuse, 10/06/2015
Amanda Acosta
Capsule Concern
Chrysler Museum
Arte Fuse, 10/06/2015
Amanda Acosta
On view at the recently renovated Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA – Beverly Fishman recreates a makeshift pharm party within the museum’s interior. Among the continued strain of interpretations on pill-based art, Fishman’s In Sickness and In Health chases the biting sensation medication elicits in the viewer. Blown to massive scale, reduced to their stark forms and injected with electrifying reflective color Fishman’s pills mirror the extreme selling tactics of the medical industry while simultaneously causing the viewer to reflect back on their own engagement with the trade.
Immediately entering into the glass gallery, we’re seduced by a glowing ringed red bar, its sections fading into itself, barely interrupted by paling blues. A candy-coated multicolored representation of (Anxiety, Depression, Panic), we begin to fade in front of it, forced to stare at our own chemically altered selves in the urethane-coated wood.Untitled, as are the majority of Fishman’s little helpers, precedes the wall label’s parenthesis prescription allowing museum goers, to take turns listing the series of pills we understand to ease these pains.
Thus a shift from definite blame on those that market these methods to a certain shame occurs as one names the (Pain Reliever) Oxy or Hydro, the former Xanax, and spots Adderall in the glass Mini Spill so readily. However minimalist in form, this familiarity with pill figures and branding coalesce into what experts in trademark law dub an “element of the medication that was not functional in its original design [which] begins to serve a purpose over time.”
Therefore pieces from Fishman’s Pharmeko series, modeled after drugs such as Valium and Prandin stamped with insignias, prolong abstraction as they immediately register to our own iconography of pill branding, which gained popularity in the 1960’s era of recognizable simplicity.
By infusing such a stark style with a critique of the pill marketing industry and subsequently its consumers, Fishman advances the modernist aesthetic of detachment to one of contemporary concerns. In Sickness and In Health satisfies our visual craving only to disappoint the physical. The notion of railing powder is exchanged with grinded glass, but that bite is similar, upsetting our own prescribed, but more often, recreational decision to ingest.
Associated News
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November 18, 2015
Logan Lecture: Beverly Fishman
Denver Art Museum, 11/18/2015
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October 22, 2015
Islip Exhibition Explores How Science Influences Art
New York Times, 10/22/2015
Karin Lipson -
October 6, 2015
Capsule Concern
Chrysler Museum
Arte Fuse, 10/06/2015
Amanda Acosta
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October 4, 2015
Compendium, October 4 through December 27, 2015
Islip Art Museum, 10/04/2015
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September 10, 2015
3 contemporary artists inaugurate redone Columbus College of Art & Design’s Canzani Center space
The Columbus Dispatch, 09/10/2015
Melissa Starker
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July 16, 2015
In Sickness and In Health
Chrysler Museum of Art, 07/16/2015
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June 3, 2015
Pills, Protest, and Piracy
The Brooklyn Rail, 06/03/2015
John J. Corso
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September 23, 2013
Celebrated Detroit Artist Beverly Fishman Opens Her Exhibition at the Broad MSU
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 09/23/2013
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September 18, 2013
ArtPrize 2013 Exhibition Center review: Meijer Gardens focuses on use of glass in contemporary art
Michigan Live, 09/18/2013
Joseph Becherer
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September 15, 2013
OPENING: Michigan sculpture park exhibits the diversity of contemporary glass art
Glass Quarterly, September 2013
Paulina Switniewska
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September 12, 2013
Shattered: Contemporary Sculpture in Glass is ArtPrize at Meijer Gardens -
October 15, 2012
BEVERLY FISHMAN NONFUNCTIONAL FRAGILITY -
September 26, 2012
FOURTH FRIDAYS FOR FRIENDS -
August 31, 2012
DIA GETS DOSE OF BIG PHARMA
Huffpost Detroit, 08/31/2012
John Corso
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January 3, 2012
Beverly Fishman
DECEPTIVE PLEASURES
ArtNet, January 2012
Donald Kuspit
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June 12, 2010
Press Release - BEVERLY FISHMAN "FUTURE NATURAL"