This seemingly pop-inspired image of a green skull by Beverly Fishman belongs to an ongoing body of phosphorescent, resin wall works Fishman initiated in 2010, in which she blends the branding imagery of Big Pharma with that of the recreational drug industry. In this series, pill forms representing prescription drugs such as Fosamax, Klonopin, and Valium co-mingle with iconography used on popular Ecstasy pills, such as the head of Bart Simpson or President Obama.

Fishman is an Anonymous Was A Woman Award Winner, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, and National Endowment for the Arts Grantee. Her solo exhibition FEELS LIKE LOVE opens in April at Kavi Gupta in Chicago.

Recent major exhibitions of her work include Recovery, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI, USA; I Dream of Sleep, Miles McEnery, New York, NY, USA; Double Edged: Geometric Abstraction Then and Now, curated by Dr. Emily Stamey, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, USA; DOSE, curated by Nick Cave, CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY, USA; Pill Spill, Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI, USA; and Beverly Fishman: In Sickness and in Health, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, USA. Work by Fishman is included in the collections of the MacArthur Foundation, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, and many others.

Fishman’s mobilization of iconic pharmaceutical forms as the basis for seemingly abstract compositions is a direct critique of how the products of the Pharmaceutical Industrial Industry are positioned in our culture against recreational drugs, despite being utilized by the public in similar ways. As Fishman states, her work proposes that, “like our overmedicated population, art, too, chases a chemical sublime.”