Beverly Fishman American, b. 1955

This painting by Beverly Fishman is the central piece of FEELS LIKE LOVE, Fishman's 2022 solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta. Measuring eight feet long, this multi-form contains five geometric elements, each belonging to Fishman’s personal visual alphabet of abstracted pharmaceutical forms. Some forms are presented whole; others are divided up. Here, a partial pain form is married to a whole pain form, an elongated pain form, a form related to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and an abstracted diazepam pill, prescribed for anxiety. A heart shape has been cut out of the center of the anxiety pill, its reflective, pink inner wall subtly illuminating the void.

“The heart is an abstraction of the V in Valium,” Fishman says. “It’s sinister. Hopefully people get that there’s that dark side. But nothing is reduced in my thinking to right or wrong, or yes or no. It’s a more complex situation, and I’m trying to negotiate that.”

The title of FEELS LIKE LOVE was inspired by a clinical description in the press of the similarities between the human brain’s reaction to love, and its reaction to opioids. Fishman’s long-running interrogation of humanity’s relationship to pharmaceuticals is as complicated and as layered as her multi-form geometric paintings.

“Pharmaceuticals intersect with feminism,” Fishman says. “Women were given Valium for their nerves. Why were they nervous? Were they unsatisfied with their lives, with their options? They were anesthetizing an entire generation.”

Fishman’s phosphorescent blasts of geometric lucidity illuminate the shadowy battleground on which we fight against an unchecked Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, to assert the right to understand and define our own bodies and identities.

“Our culture’s relationship to medicine and science is complex,” Fishman says. “I’m in the unknown. Can abstraction be political and socially relevant? These are things I’ve always thought were important in my work. What drives me is all the stuff I speak about, the medical stuff, the pain. I have a few single friends that almost lost their minds during this pandemic, they were so isolated from everyone. It’s real. The pandemic has caused a lot more distress. So if it feels like love, baby, let’s go for it.”