Beverly Fishman American, b. 1955

At 13.5 feet long, and consisting of eight geometric elements, this monumental painting is the largest work from Beverly Fishman’s 2022 solo exhibition FEELS LIKE LOVE. Taking its name from a clinical description in the press for how our neurochemical response to opioids mimics our brain’s reaction experiencing love, the exhibition is rooted in a color world of opalescent, cotton-candy-like hues.

Fishman’s geometric paintings are abstracted from the visual language of the pharmaceutical industry. Throughout her oeuvre, a symbolic, aesthetic alphabet has evolved that contains hundreds of individual forms. These forms sometimes appear whole, and are sometimes divided up into partial doses, then blended into a multidose, suggestive of a chemical cocktail. This particular multi-dose contains a partial depression form, four Asthma forms, an osteoporosis form, an anxiety form, and another depression form. Holes have been cut from six of the forms, creating what Fishman refers to as “missing doses.” These voids allow space for light to reflect off the sides of the highly polished forms, filling the empty space with ethereal color that changes according to lighting conditions.

These complex works speak in conversation with the philosophies of movements such as Light & Space and Minimalism, while making starkly contemporary statements about how our chemical reaction to art is connected to our chemical reactions to many other things.