×





    Beverly Fishman: The Pursuit of Perfection

    September 12-November 2, 2024

    Opening Reception: Thursday, September 12, 5–7pm
    Artist Talk with Susie Kantor: September 14, 2pm

    Jessica Silverman is honored to announce Beverly Fishman’s “The Pursuit of Perfection,” a solo show of paintings and sculptures on view from September 12 to November 2.

    A comment on the reality and fantasy of progress, Fishman’s exhibition advances the history of abstraction and Pop Art while examining recent developments in science, technology, and human consciousness. Through sophisticated geometric compositions, vibrant colors, smooth textures, and lustrous refracted light, Fishman’s work explores the way that biotechnology has changed the experience of being alive. The artist positions art not as an opiate of the people but as a pharmaceutical improvement or engineer of altered states, upgraded realities, and optimized selves.

    “The Pursuit of Perfection” includes six new bas-relief wall paintings from Fishman’s ongoing “Polypharmacy” series, a term the artist uses to refer to pills that inspire the works’ underlying structures and shapes. In Pleasure, Liberation, Clarity, Choice, Ease, Self- Determination (2024), for example, the six concepts in the title are not only philosophical ideals but the physical promises of six pills. The particular source medications of this painting address chronic pain, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and birth control. The enamel-on-wood works are visual antidotes whose intense hues overflow onto the white walls upon which they hang, creating a ricochet of positive side effects. By these means, Fishman transforms disease into ease; she converts disorders into auspicious orders.
    The show is rounded out by Fishman’s earlier “Kandyland” series (2009–10). Created in acrylics and enamels on polished stainless steel, these psychedelic paintings owe their optical style to illicit drugs rather than prescriptions. Dark Kandyland, for instance, is divided into two parts. The upper half suggests a sea of static gray matter, punctuated by raver graphics and other emblems. Meanwhile, the colorful weave depicted on the bottom half of the painting could be a literalization of body “tissue,” a word derived from the French verb to weave (tisser). It is disrupted by the waves of electrocardiograms and recorded sounds, which signal the physiology of heartbeats and dance rhythms. Like a hazy horizon line between the upper mind-sky and lower body-earth is a row of QR codes that speak to the embodiment of commerce. Capitalism is not outside and over there; it is integral to the health and wealth of our self-awareness.
    The show also presents a range of free-standing sculptures based on single pill forms. The work, Composure (2024), is a perfectly balanced, glossy pale blue form, based on the shape of a pill prescribed for anxiety. It is everything that anxiety is not -- quiet, cool, confident, and comfortable. A minimal tour de force in the tradition of Barbara Hepworth and Ellsworth Kelly, the sculpture offers a focal point for calming the body and mind.
    Fishman’s unique creative voice is in conversation with a broad range of artists, dead and alive: hard-edge abstractionists like Frank Stella; Op artists such as Bridget Riley; Light and Space figures like James Turrell, John McCracken, and 1960s Judy Chicago; and Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Damien Hirst. Through her various distinctive bodies of work, Fishman not only addresses the biotechnical and socio-cultural concerns of contemporary life, but the timeless themes of life, death, and beauty.

    Beverly Fishman (b. 1955, Philadelphia, PA) was an artist-in-residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art between 1992 and 2019, where she was Head of the Painting Department. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a National Academy of Design Academician, and an Anonymous Was a Woman awardee. She has enjoyed over forty solo exhibitions, including at Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Toledo Museum of Art, OH; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO; and Cranbrook Museum of Art, MI among others. Her work is in many collections, including MSU Broad Museum, East Lansing, MI; Michigan State University, Ann Arbor; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Cranbrook Art Museum; and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS. She received an MFA from Yale University. Fishman lives and works in Detroit, MI.