Skip to main content

Beverly Fishman 2025

Page 1

BEVERLY FISHMAN

511 West 22nd Street

515 West 22nd Street

525 West 22nd Street

520 West 21st Street

New York NY 10011

New York NY 10011

New York NY 10011

New York NY 10011


THIS COULD BE THE CURE Meredith Mendelsohn A little pill carries so much promise—wellness, relief, calm, focus, vitality, pleasure. But also, so much menace. Beverly Fishman channels all of that, and more, in her sculptural abstract paintings inspired by the highly calculated designs of prescription pills. Fishman has spent the better part of her career pondering the dual nature of drugs and the health-care machine. She has closely observed the normalization of pill-popping and the evolving medicalization of life. And she has watched modern medicine shape the lives of her loved ones, for good and for bad.

2

The works she creates in response are just what the doctor ordered—or maybe even better. In “Geometries of Hope (and Fear),” she introduces sixteen new works that continue to spotlight the fraught world of pharmaceuticals through her own brand of dynamic geometric abstraction. Her vividly colored, immaculately produced paintings on wood supports are shaped to resemble enlarged pills, which she then subtly links together to create unique prescription cocktails. Each arrangement is a discrete work of art, an alluring visual placebo coaxing different psychic effects based on Fishman’s juxtapositions of color, shape, and volume. Always in the back of Fishman’s mind are the industry’s marketing machinations. “Nothing is by chance,” says the artist, who has spent decades researching the pharmaceutical industry. “They’d put electrodes on people’s heads and then show them pills of different sizes and colors, and they’d watch the reaction in the brain. And that’s how they decided that a big pill was better than a small pill for this particular illness, or that a blue one worked better for that specific disease. Or that two pills were better than one.” Her art is just as intentional, conceived with the precision of a chemist and the sensitivity of a poet, and painstakingly executed through numerous steps. The perfection of her forms—circles, ovals, triangles, squares, and rectangular slivers—suggests the geometric rigor of a pharmaceutical pill extruder, but her artistic choices elevate them high above drugstore banality. She is a skilled colorist, concocting and contrasting unlikely hues to energize, dazzle, or subdue. Those colors are then transformed into opaque automotive paint, which covers the forms in perfectly uniform concentric bands. She frequently bevels the edges of her wood supports so they take on a jewel-like quality under their pristine surfaces. They are treasures, after all, she seems to be telling us with a wink.


An artist and a former educator, Fishman helmed the painting department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for 27 years. She is an astute observer of art history, and we can sense that in her singular style, which seamlessly blends artistic modes we rarely see come together. She soaked up the feminism of Ree Morton (a mentor) and the artists of the Pattern and Decoration movement. We can sense that, in particular, in the way that her forms almost feel stitched together. But this body of work, with its high-production value and pared-down geometries, clearly shares DNA with some rigorous postwar modernist modes, from Minimalism and Op Art, to hard-edge painting and Finish Fetish. She gives us a truly stimulating optical experience, but with the bonus of a political twist, her formal choices stealthily guiding us into the social fabric rather than removing us from it. Her pristine surfaces and streamlined shapes may show no obvious sign of her hand, for instance—a classic Minimalist strategy—and yet that erasure feels central to her institutional critique, posing an uncanny parallel to the anonymity and opacity of Big Pharma. The lack of transparency in an industry with so much power over our well-being is one of her primary concerns. “Why is there a tag on your sweater telling you where it’s made, but not on your medicine?” she asks. She once tried to find out where the drugs used to anesthetize her for surgery were from. No one could tell her. “I’m not saying drugs are bad. I’m saying we should understand that drugs are being sold to us, the way everything in the world is being sold to us. Pharmaceutical companies compete with one another, and they are all trying to maximize their profits.” A critique of consumer culture, a fascination with product design, an expansive palette of vivid high-contrast colors—the legacy of Pop art is also not far off. The tactics of advertising and marketing are especially inscribed in largescale works in which Fishman arranges her pill-shaped components horizontally. Strung together like words or glyphs in an illegible typeface, these communications—made to be felt, not intellectualized—beckon us like store signage or corporate logos. Some of her more vertical arrangements bring to mind molecular formulas in medication package inserts. In “Geometries of Hope (and Fear),” Fishman introduces several new works from her ongoing series, which she calls Polypharmacy—a term that means taking multiple medications simultaneously. In their orderly alignment and institutional pastels and grays, they seem to telegraph safety and familiarity. But there are secrets. Something always feels a little off. It’s a palette from another reality, another era, summoning shades of makeup and pill packaging from the past, but also the future. Color is crucial to her vision, and she experiments with it tirelessly, starting with small collages made from paint sample cards, color swatches, and other fragments. She intuitively seeks the right—or perfectly

3


wrong—combinations and strategically places the paint. Her surfaces might be concave or convex, impossibly glossy or seductively textured—shaping our perceptions of color at every turn. Some forms are left open, like empty frames or life-preserver rings, so she can paint their interior rims. There is something oddly intimate about this, like body parts we don’t usually see. These passages, often painted in neon shades, cast atmospheric hazes—a “chemical fluorescence,” as Fishman describes it—onto the vacant walls beneath. Their materiality seems to dissolve as we stand before them. Each work vibrates on a different frequency; each has its own microclimate. With each new body of work, Fishman’s pill count grows. “Geometries of Hope (and Fear)” includes her most complex cocktails yet—eight, nine, ten different pill-like components in a single assemblage. “They started as one solid pill, and then I broke them in half,” the artist explains. “Then they became three pills, and then four, and then five, and then more. In your eighties you can be on up to fifteen pills a day. I’d like to get up to eighteen pills in a single piece.”

4

The challenge of positioning so many pill forms in a single work inspired Fishman to develop an important new compositional strategy. In six works that are introduced here, she abandons the x and y axis for a more expressive jumble. The idea came to her when she saw a photo of her friend’s daily pill intake in the palm of his hand. We can sense the anatomical contours in the vaguely triangular arrangements, and there’s a new whiff of movement and randomness, as though the pills have just been scooped off the bathroom counter or are succumbing to gravity as they slide down someone’s throat. We sense a stronger human presence. Fishman’s own hand is also more visible, glimpsed in the off-kilter positioning of some of the components. She calls these works Equilibrium. Fishman listens closely to the verbiage of medical marketing. “The pharmaceutical industry promotes different medications to different groups of people and uses different language depending on whom they are addressing,” she says. She puts equal thought into the titles of her works, and they play a crucial role in our experience of her abstractions. She first began listing the conditions that each of her enlarged fantasy pills might be treating—epilepsy, pain, ADHD, and anxiety, for instance. In 2023, she began listing the desired effects of the drugs instead. “I realized that what I wanted for my own work was for it to convey the intensity of a transformational experience,” she says. “So, the titles started describing what you wanted from the medication.” She also added the term “Polypharmacy.” Polypharmacy: Comfort, Equanimity, Confidence, Choice, Serenity, Joy, Pleasure (2024), for instance, is an orderly horizontal arrangement that communicates control and harmony. Two open half-circles bookend the other forms like parentheses, firmly holding them all together.


For her more populated works, Fishman sought a shorter naming convention. She landed on Equilibrium (followed by a parenthetical notation just for her own use). “We are always trying to maintain homeostasis, balance, a complex interaction between multiple external and internal forces,” explains the artist. The way those dueling forces shape our lives has long haunted Fishman. Her exploration of medical themes began early on with curiosity about congenital illnesses in her family and how microscopic differences impact identity—how our genetic makeup and biological realities are separate and yet inseparable from the way we are perceived. Her abstractions began with cells, and we can still sense that underlying structure in the way her constituent components come together to comprise a whole. “I was interested in our materiality, our physical composition, and how one minute shift in our cellular chemistry could change our whole lives,” she says. “I was asking the question, ‘Who am I?’ But I wasn’t interested in how we looked. Or the figure. It was more cellular.” The AIDS crisis in the 1980s was also formative. “I understood how the virus was an organism that could radically transform your entire physical chemistry and how your whole life could be affected by it. It could become part of your identity, and it could determine how you were treated. Or even how men and women were treated differently, and how that radically affected your life.” Fishman began exploring anatomy in medical books, and then the imagery of medical technology—MRIs and CT scans. Works on metal mimicking those technologies followed. “I was tracking developments in how we were imaged—or imagined—and how this imaging fractured us into pieces, and how these fragments told the story of our health,” she recalls. Her interest in biotechnology and the body was not popular. The subject was just too taboo. Today, the subject of medicine feels increasingly relevant, with our massive aging population, a growing number of adolescents on mind-altering prescriptions, and radical changes to our health-care system looming on the horizon. “I just want my work to start a conversation that doesn’t have a didactic end, to provide an experience that makes you want to stay long enough to think,” she says. And that it does. Her growing body of geometric abstractions not only catapult a pressing cultural reality to the forefront of our consciousness, but they are incredibly rewarding to look at. The placebo effect is real.

Meredith Mendelsohn is a New York-based art writer and historian. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, CNN Style, The Brooklyn Rail, ARTnews, and 1stDibs:Introspective, among other publications. She has contributed to several books about Andy Warhol published by Taschen.

5


6

Polypharmacy: Confidence, Energy, Joy, Liberation, 2024

Urethane paint on wood 44 x 40 1/2 inches 112 x 103 cm


8

Polypharmacy: Equilibrium, Relaxation, Confidence, Energy, Stability, Composure, Peace, 2024 Urethane paint on wood 48 x 117 inches 122 x 297 cm


10

Polypharmacy: Focus, Tranquility, Relief, Energy, Self-Determination, 2024 Urethane paint on wood 44 x 86 inches 112 x 218 cm


12

Equilibrium (B.O.C.C.), 2025

Urethane paint on wood 64 x 58 inches 163 x 147 cm


14

Equilibrium (C.B.M.P.), 2025 Urethane paint on wood 72 x 66 3/8 inches 183 x 169 cm


16

Equilibrium (J.S.C.), 2025 Urethane paint on wood 45 x 42 inches 114 x 107 cm


18

Equilibrium (L.W.6), 2025 Urethane paint on wood 45 1/2 x 40 inches 116 x 102 cm


20

Equilibrium (P.P.9), 2025 Urethane paint on wood 72 x 60 1/2 inches 183 x 154 cm


22

Equilibrium (Y.B.10), 2025 Urethane paint on wood 46 x 45 inches 117 x 114 cm


24

Equilibrium (Y.P.B.), 2025 Urethane paint on wood 45 x 44 inches 114 x 112 cm


26

Polypharmacy: Agency, Confidence, Calm, Joy, Contentment, 2025 Urethane paint on wood 72 x 134 inches 183 x 340 cm


28

Polypharmacy: Agency, Ease, Serenity, Clarity, Solace, Self Determination, 2025 Urethane paint on wood 44 x 88 inches 112 x 224 cm


30

Polypharmacy: Relief, Clarity, Composure, Liberation, Choice, Freedom, 2025

Urethane paint on wood 44 x 89 inches 112 x 226 cm


32

Polypharmacy: Relief, Composure, Stability, Strength, Liberation, 2025 Urethane paint on wood 45 x 41 inches 114 x 104 cm


34

Polypharmacy: Sexual Freedom, Choice, Energy, Confidence, 2025 Urethane paint on wood 37 1/2 x 45 inches 95 x 114 cm


36

Polypharmacy: Stability, Calm, Confidence, Energy, Tranquility, Contentment, 2025 Urethane paint on wood 72 x 141 inches 183 x 358 cm


BEVERLY FISHMAN Born in Philadelphia, PA in 1955 Lives and works in Detroit, MI EDUCATION 1980 MFA, Yale University, New Haven, CT 1977 BFA, Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2025 “Geometries of Hope (and Fear),” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2024 “Quality of Life,” KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo, Japan “The Pursuit of Perfection,” Jessica Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2023 “Something For The Pain,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2022 “Cure,” The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH “Feels Like Love,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL “Recovery,” Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI 2021 “The Promise of Happiness,” Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC “Love Letter to L.A.,” Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2020 “I Dream of Sleep,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Monotypes, 2005-2006,” Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, MI “Studies on Relief,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL 2019 “Fantastic Voyage, 1985-1987,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “Future Perfect,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL Ronchini Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2018 “Synthetic Wonderland,” Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Chemical Sublime,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL 2017 “T.N.N.,” Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY “DOSE” (curated by Nick Cave), CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY “Another Day in Paradise,” Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL 2016 “Pain Management,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI 2015 “Big Pharma,” Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH “Beverly Fishman: In Sickness and in Health,” Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA “Living Networks,” Wasserman Projects, Birmingham, MI 2013 “Pharmacopoeia,” Wasserman Projects at Miami Projects, Miami, FL “Focus: Beverly Fishman,” Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI “Wavelength,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM “Artificial Paradise,” Wasserman Projects, Birmingham, MI


2012 “Pill Spill,” Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI 2011 Galerie Richard, New York, NY “Pharmako,” Galerie Richard, Paris, France “Pill Spill,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH 2010 “Future Natural,” David Richard Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM “Pharmaco-Xanadu,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2009 “Kandyland,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI “Beverly Fishman: Recent Paintings,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2008 “Chromo-ecstasy” (curated by Dr. Sania Papa), Artis Causa Gallery, Thessaloniki, Greece “Optical Unconscious,” Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL 2007 “Matrix,” Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, France 2006 “Chromophilia,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2005 “Chemical Abstraction,” Skestos Gabriele Gallery, Chicago, IL “Take as Needed,” Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York, NY “One a Day,” Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, France Daimler Chrysler Galerie, Berlin, Germany 2004 “Ecstasy,” Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, France

2003 “happy happy,” Solway Jones Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Pharmakon,” Wellcome Trust, London, United Kingdom “From Here to There,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2002 Boom Gallery, Oak Park, IL 2001 “Feel Good,” Gallery 2211 Solway Jones, Los Angeles, CA 2000 “Pharmaco Xanadu,” White Columns, New York, NY “Drugstore,” PØST Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Fantastic Voyage,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 1999 “Light and Dark Matter,” Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO 1998 “I.D. Series,” Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, MI “Clusters: New Paintings,” Heriard-Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA

1997 “New Work,” Raleigh Gallery, Boca Raton, FL “Clusters, New Work,” Mott Community College, Flint, MI 1996 “Beverly Fishman: Critical Mass,” Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, MI “Beverly Fishman: Recent Work,” Elgin Community College Gallery, Elgin, IL “Beverly Fishman: Breaking the Code,” The John J. McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, OH 1994 “Hybrids: Recent Paintings,” Indigo Galleries, Boca Raton, FL


1993 “Hybrids: New Work,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI “New Works,” Cultural Art Center, Columbus, OH “New Paintings,” Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, MI 1987 “Four Winners,” Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Stamford, CT 1986 “Drawings,” Sarah Doyle Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI 1985 “Drawings, Paintings and Sculpture,” Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT Stamford Museum & Nature Center, Art/Ex Gallery, Stamford, CT Cummings Arts Center, Connecticut College, New London, CT 1984 “Sculpture,” Urbach Gallery, New Haven, CT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2026 “Pharmaceuticals and Pill Culture in Contemporary Art: Pharmaesthetics” (curated by John Corso-Esquival and Lia Rose Newman), Davidson College Art Galleries, Davidson, NC (forthcoming) 2025 “Small Paintings Show: XXS” (curated by Wendy White), Brintz + County Gallery, Palm Beach, FL 2024 “All Bangers, All The Time: 25th Anniversary Exhibition,”

Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “The Greatest Emergency” (curated by Santiago Zabala), Minerva Hall, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain “191st Annual: Academy Style,” National Academy of Design, New York, NY “Cosmic Geometries: The Prairie’s Edge,” Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL “Playground,” Sevil Dolmacı Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 2023 “Hommage à Günter Fruhtrunk,” Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany Meany Center for the Performing Arts, University of Washington, Seattle, WA “Beverly Fishman & Markus Linnenbrink,” Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson, WY “A Growing Season,” Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Get Together,” Reyes | Finn, Detroit, MI “Solidarity,” Nexx Asia, Taipei, Taiwan 2022 “The Technological Sublime,” Pazo Fine Art, Kensington, MD “It Takes a Village,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “Summer Drift,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2021 “Z E N A X: Beverly Fishman and Gary Lang,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “No Soft Edges: Women in Minimalism,” Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL “e pluribus: Out of Many,” National Academy of Design, New York, NY “Glyphadelphia” (curated by Carl D’Alvia), HESSE FLATOW, New York, NY “Light” (curated by Rico Gatson), Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY


2020 “Shapeshifters: Transformations in Contemporary Art,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI “The Responsive Eye Revisited: Then, Now, and In-Between,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2019 “Driving Forces: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Ann and Ron Pizzuti,” Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH “Inaugural Exhibition,” Gavlak Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA “Constructed,” Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT “cart, horse, cart” (curated by Michael Goodson and Anna Stothart), Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY “Double Edged: Geometric Abstraction Then and Now” (curated by Dr. Emily Stamey), Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC “Shape, Rattle, and Roll,” Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY 2018 “Grafik” (curated by Ryan McGinness), Harper’s Books, East Hampton, NY “Front International” (curated by Michelle Grabner), Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH “Xeriscape,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “Public Matter,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “Primary,” Korn Gallery, Dorothy Young Center for the Arts, Drew University, Madison, NJ “Spieltrieb,” Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY 2017 “Remains of the Days,” Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey “Paper,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL “A Dazzling Decade,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS “The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness,” The School, Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY “She Rocks,” Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY

2016 “Sensuous/Pensive: At Odds and Overlapping,” Booth Gallery, New York, NY “Painting/Object,” Library Street Collective, Los Angeles, CA “Super Sketchy,” DCTV, New York, NY “Western Project @ JAUS,” JAUS, Los Angeles, CA 2015 “Holiday Art Show,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM “Compendium,” Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY “The Brain,” Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Ketchum, ID “Going Big,” Central Booking, New York, NY “Post-Op: The Responsive Eye Fifty Years After,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2014 “Burnout” (curated by Anne Vieux and Martha Mysko), Small Editions, Daylight Savings Gallery, Brooklyn, NY “Holiday Group Show,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM “42nd Annual International Glass Invitational Award Winners,” Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN “Sensation,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2013 “Color as Abstraction,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM “Shattered: Contemporary Sculpture in Glass,” Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI “Heads, Shoulders, Genes, & Toes,” Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 2012 “Seeing Red,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM “Segment #3,” Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey “Art on Paper,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC “Blue, White, and Red,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO “First Year in New York,” Galerie Richard, New York, NY “Petits Formats,” Galerie Richard, Paris, France 2011 “No Object is an Island: New Dialogues with the Collection,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI


2010 “Pop, Op, and Geo Again,” David Richard Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM “Overpaper,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO “Ceremonial Exhibition,” American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY “Invitational,” American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY 2009 “Infinitesimal Eternity: Images Made in the Face of Spectacle,” Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT “opening season,” Artis Causa Gallery, Thessaloniki, Greece “Michigan Masters Invitational,” Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI “Overview ‘09,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO “Color,” Rena Sternberg Gallery, Glencoe, IL 2008 “Mixed Show,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI “Creating Velocity,” Community Arts Gallery, Paramount Bank, Ferndale, MI “Small Treasures,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI “Small Abstract Paintings,” Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, France 2007 “Alma Mater,” Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA “Op Art: Then and Now,” Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH “Mixed Exhibition,” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, United Kingdom “Introduction,” Artis Causa Gallery, Thessaloniki, Greece “Group Show,” Galerie Toxic, Luxembourg, Luxembourg “Inland See,” Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI “Optical Edge” (curated by Robert C. Morgan), Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, NY “Fresh,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI “WHY: Detroit,” Detroit Gallery, Detroit, MI

2006 “Group Show,” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, United Kingdom “Summer Group Show,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2005 “Paper,” Skestos Gabriele Gallery, Chicago, IL “Extreme Abstraction,” Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, France 2004 “In Polytechnicolor,” Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York, NY “Summer Show,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2003 “Group Show,” Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN 2002 “Post-Digital Painting,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI “Loaded,” Midway, St. Paul, MN “Zero Degrees,” The Brewery Project, Los Angeles, CA “Bitchin Pictures,” Gallery 2211 Solway Jones, Los Angeles, CA “Group Show,” Solway Jones, Los Angeles, CA “Group Show,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2001 “2001 MCA Benefit Art Auction,” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL “Colorforms,” Detroit Artists Market, Detroit, MI “Made,” PØST Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Benefit Exhibition,” White Columns, New York, NY “RE:production,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2000 “Go Ask Alice,” PØST Gallery, Los Angeles, CA


1999 “Gallery Artists,” Lemberg Gallery, Birmingham, MI “Beverly Fishman, Heather McGill, Carl Toth: Wall Magnets,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI “Abstraction: two to three,” Cleveland State University Art Gallery, Cleveland, OH “Postopia,” Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA 1998 “Prime Focus,” University Galleries of Illinois State University, Normal, IL “Visualizing Digiteracy,” Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN 1997 “Flirting at a Distance: New Abstraction,” Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE “Colors, Contrasts and Cultures,” Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT “Techno Seduction,” Cooper Union, New York, NY “Salientgreen,” Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, MI 1996 “Technologyculture,” Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA “Black and Blue,” Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham, MI 1995 “Interventions,” Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI “Cranbrook Painting 1992–95,” Union League Club, New York, NY “Selections from the File,” Organization of Independent Artists, New York, NY “14th Michigan Biennial: The Language of Imagery,” Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI “Building the Cranbrook Collection: Acquisitions from Roy Slade’s Tenure,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI “Recent Acquisitions,” Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT “Confrontation, Mediation, Transcendence,” Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

“Tangible Verifications,” University of Akron, Akron, OH “Split Image,” Bloomfield College, Bloomfield, NJ “The Return of the Cadavre Exquis,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY “Signs of Life,” OIA, New York, NY 1992 “Beneath the Surface,” 148 Gallery, New York, NY “360’E-Venti,” Pino Moleca Gallery, New York, NY and Rome, Italy “Morphologic,” Art in General, New York, NY “Beyond Nature,” Marymount Manhattan College Gallery, New York, NY 1991 “Divergent Currents,” Hal Katzen Gallery, New York, NY 1990 “Aspects of Nature,” College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY 1989 “Signifiers of the Spirit,” Artspace, New Haven, CT “Artists from Yale,” London Institute, London, United Kingdom “New Sculpture,” East Hampton Center of Contemporary Art, East Hampton, NY “The Drawing Show,” Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA 1988 “Hybrids,” Addison Ripley Gallery, Washington, D.C. “Blum, Coyne, Fishman,” John Slade Ely House, New Haven, CT 1986 “Blum, Coyne, Fishman,” P.S. 122, New York, NY “The Brutal Figure: Visceral Images,” Robeson Center Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ “The Changing Face of Liberty,” Women’s Caucus for Art, New York, NY, New Haven, CT, and Hartford, CT


1985 “Works on Paper,” Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT PUBLIC ART 2018 “RISE,” Detroit City Club Apartments, Detroit, MI “Untitled,” The Belt, Detroit, MI 1996 “Untitled,” Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI

AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES 2020 Inductee, National Academy of Design, New York, NY 2018 Anonymous Was A Woman Award, New York, NY 2015 GAPP Developmental Artist Residency, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH 2011 Guest Artist Pavilion Project, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH 2010 Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY 2008 Nominee, Kresge Eminent Artist Award, Detroit, MI 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, New York, NY

2003 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, New York, NY 1990 Exhibition Grant, Artists Space, New York, NY Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C. 1986 Emergency Materials Fund, Artists Space, New York, NY 1979 Ford Foundation Special Project Grant, Yale University, New Haven, CT Ford Foundation Summer Study Grant, Yale University, New Haven, CT 1977 Weber Award for Excellence in Painting, Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA


SELECT COLLECTIONS Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey Cantor Fitzgerald, New York, NY Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA Cleveland Clinic Art Collection, Cleveland, OH Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH Compuware World Headquarters, Detroit, MI Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital, Ann Arbor, MI Chrysler Headquarters, Auburn Hills, MI Detroit Art Collection, Detroit, MI Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI The Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT Dirk Denison Architects, Chicago, IL Eaton Corporation Collection, Cleveland, OH Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, East Lansing, MI Ernst Cardiovascular Center, Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI Financial Management Corporation, Chicago, IL Fred Alger Management Inc., New York, NY Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Miami, FL Norwalk Community College, Norwalk, CT Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH Prudential Financial, Newark, NJ Queens College Art Collection, Queens, NY

Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Stamford, CT Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, OH Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN UBS Financial Services, New York, NY United Nations Embassy, Istanbul, Turkey United Nations Embassy, Vienna, Austria United States Embassy, Bujumbura, Burundi United States Embassy, Manila, Philippines United States Embassy, Oslo, Norway United States Embassy, Port Louis, Republic of Mauritius University of Michigan Biomedical Science Research Building, Ann Arbor, MI University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute, Ann Arbor, MI University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital, Ann Arbor, MI Wayne State University Art Collection, Detroit, MI Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI


Published on the occasion of the exhibition

BEVERLY FISHMAN

GEOMETRIES OF HOPE (AND FEAR) 8 May – 21 June 2025 Miles McEnery Gallery 515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2025 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2025 Meredith Mendelsohn Associate Director Julia Schlank, New York, NY Photography by Dan Bradica, New York, NY Catalogue layout by Allison Leung ISBN: 979-8-3507-4736-2 Cover: Equilibrium (B.O.C.C.), (detail), 2025


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Beverly Fishman 2025 by Miles McEnery Gallery - Issuu