Beverly Fishman’s highly-polished Pill Reliefs utilize iconic pharmaceutical forms as the basis for seemingly abstract compositions that radiate with color. Made with urethane automotive paint and medium-density fiberboard (MDF), the works sometimes reference a single pill form and other times present an assemblage of pill forms — a chemical cocktail.

Integral to the success of these works is the fact that so many of them possess distinctive voids. Nicknamed “Missing Doses,” these pieces engage vacant space with color and light. They evoke the work of light and space artists like James Turrell in their ability to activate emptiness and raise questions about what truly is the subject of the work. They also harken back to John McLaughlin, the pioneering artist on whose philosophies most early Light and Space work is based. In the 1940s, McLaughlin became influenced by Zen philosophy — specifically the way it addresses the idea of the void. Similarly, Fishman’s abstract compositions reflect on the in-between spaces, the so-called vacancies, which provide meaning and structure to art, and to life.