Beverly Fishman "I Dream of Sleep"

BEVERLY FISHMAN

BEVERLY FISHMAN I DREAM OF SLEEP

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

BEVERLY!FISHMAN"!I!DREAM!OF!SLEEP

By Amy Rahn

In Beverly Fishman’s work, the pharmaceutical industry’s slick, angular packaging and the legacies of hardedge and dimensional painting search out the human cost of our medicines and their big promises and high polish. Faintly glowing against austere gallery walls, these works parade paradoxes: cleanness and contamination, laboratory control and the biological drive toward entropy, the austerities of hard-edge painting and the excesses of feeling, and the uncanny balance that medicine strikes between systems of science and systems of belief. Fishman’s works suggest sleek corporate marketing and the fluorescent language of caution, even emergency. They contaminate the spaces of art and pharmaceuticals, speaking the rage of loss in the language of corporate cure.

Fishman’s works in I Dream of Sleep, which were begun in January 2019, appropriate the expensively wrought marketing methods of a medical industry whose distinctive forms ensure a user that she’s getting the “real thing.” As Fishman explains: “Drug manufacturers use shapes and colors to distinguish their products visually and to promote brand loyalty. Both corporate and street chemical dealers develop specific iconographies to create lifestyle-driven products. They brand the pills to target audiences’ tastes, desires, beliefs, and ideals.” 1 The purchase of a name-brand drug simultaneously offers a sense of safety, security, wellness, and brand loyalty. Fishman’s paintings speak directly to those for whom these drugs’ forms are familiar.

Borrowing the corporatized shapes of mass-produced medications, Fishman’s works deliver what looks like a machine-produced high-gloss finish that, paradoxically, is meticulously handmade. She joins impeccable technical skill with the appearance of mass production. Her works have been compared with those of Finish Fetish artists like John McCracken and Robert Irwin,2 as well as those of Peter Halley,3 but Fishman argues with the common perception that her work is primarily in dialogue with (implicitly male) hard-edge abstraction. She looks instead to a messier lineage of paintings and sculpture that occupy an interchangeable space between form and feeling—that channel loss and joy, contemplation and analysis along lines of color.

1. Beverly Fishman, “Magic Bullet,” Cultural Politics 14, no. 1 (March 2018): 49.

2. See, for example, Michelle Grabner, “Reviews: Beverly Fishman,” ArtForum 56, no. 9 (May 2018): 240.

3. See Jason Stopa, “The Drug of Abstraction: An Interview with Beverly Fishman,” Art in America (February 17, 2017). h!ps://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/the-drug-of-abstraction-an-interview-with-beverly-fishman-56464/

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“There is by now such a long history of female abstraction in modern and contemporary art—from Sonia Delaunay and Hilma af Klint to Elizabeth Murray and Anne Truitt—that it is finally time to put the boys’ club myth to rest once and for all,” Fishman says. “Personally, I need to explore abstraction through a conceptual focus: the forms and colors of medicine and the body. This allows me to unite shape and color with questions of identity.”4 Her paintings, extruded from the space between art and science, draw the philosophies and forms of pharmaceuticals into dialogue with their deeply felt human repercussions. In so doing, they link with Anne Truitt’s project in the early 1960s as described by the scholar Miguel de Baca: “to evoke viscerally embodied responses to her work without making the human body an explicit referent.”5 In their slick forms, punctured through to the wall, pressed against each other in breathless sequence, Fishman’s works refer to the history of hard-edge abstraction and minimalism, while also being fiercely personal and connected to the hard calculus of corporate medicine as it intersects with individual bodies. Fishman’s works were partially motivated by her sister Judy’s death in December 2018 after a month-long stay in a New Jersey hospital.

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Discussing her sister, Fishman explains, “She was saved by medicine for many decades, and then it killed her.”6 The personal and the political, the economic and the biological are tied up in the medicalization of bodies, especially women’s bodies. “As I see it, the growth of medicine, the law, and capitalism are intimately related,” Fishman writes.7 “Today, under U.S. law, women are not given the same control over their bodies that men are. Medicine contributes to the formation of restrictive laws in a variety of different ways: for example, by defining fetal viability, harmful behavior, legal and illegal drugs, and a whole host of other concepts. In my work, I am trying to understand the world in which I have lived for more than six decades.”8 A corollary to an individual medical chart where turns for the better and worse might accumulate into a record of healing or decline, Fishman’s pills map hope and its prescriptions. Scaled up to confront the body, they draw the viewer along a trajectory that maps individualized paths along the contours of pharmaceutical cures. Yet, like the centers that drop out of the pills Fishman agglomerates, the promise of medication can be hollow at its core.

4. Beverly Fishman, Wri!en interview (unpublished), December 1, 2019.

5. Miguel de Baca, Memory Work: Anne Trui! and Sculpture, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2016): 39.

6. Beverly Fishman, Wri!en interview, December 1, 2019.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

As Fishman appropriates familiar and purposefully addictive pill forms, she often poetically amends the center-breaks, which are characteristic of many tabs and allow for pills to be segmented into smaller doses (called dividoses). Whether she cracks pill forms along their scored lines, dividing the dose, or empties out the centers of the pills and replaces them with painted, dimensional edges that radiate in the pill shape’s hollow core, she often constructs series that march along gallery walls in sequence or are stacked in quadrants, creating “drug cocktails.”

These amalgams of medications might equally be portraits of their users. Whose medicine cabinet, a viewer might wonder, contains a cocktail for, as one work is titled, Bipolar, Anti-Psychotic, Sleepiness, Depression?

The cure and the challenges it indexes outline an individual for whom these shapes might be daily routine, reminder, and respite. Suggesting a daily reality, they also point toward an uncertain future. As the writer Dawn Chan rhetorically asked of Fishman’s work, “And when medicine becomes precise and effective enough, will our behaviors start to perfectly correlate to the cocktail of pills we pop?”9 7

The medicine we take today frames our present while pointing toward a chemically tailored future.

“Polypharmacy”—the practice of simultaneously treating one or more ailments with many medications, offers hope, suggesting there’s a cure for what ails us. But such multifarious prescriptions sometimes create unforeseen medical crises, as drugs prescribed by different doctors interact dangerously. This makes polypharmacy sometimes a symptom of the medicalized body, and sometimes a threat to it.

In Untitled (Epilepsy, Anxiety, Depression) (2019), three discrete forms built of angles, curves, bevels, and arcs cluster inside a red halo that almost singes the wall behind it. A large open shape halfway between an arrowhead and a hook holds a green glow within; a quarter-circle edged with fluorescent green and silvery white harbors a crushed citrine atmosphere, while a mounded rectangular form above shifts beyond the quarter-circle’s edge, its black, white, and red weight balancing precariously as a red center glows in tandem with the perimeter around it. It could be an altarpiece—its tripartite form echoing the traditional sacred

9. Dawn Chan, “Beverly Fishman: Drugs of Choice,” Beverly Fishman (New York: Miles McEnery Gallery, 2018).

representations of earth, heaven and hell, or God in three forms—here translated into a trinity of suffering.

In this chemical religion, the abstracted pills answer the prayers of the ailing, but incompletely. In translating pills into glowing overscale altarpieces, Fishman demonstrates the daily rites of pharmaceuticals as a kind of shared religion—a belief in the inherent benevolence of getting better.

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Coming of age in New York during the AIDS crisis and having cared for multiple ailing family members, Fishman’s life experiences have been marked by the medicalization of people she has loved. “For almost my entire life, I have had to confront serious illnesses in my immediate family members,” Fishman explains.10 “I have also had my own health scares, and I am highly aware of how important medicine can be to our lives, as well as its tremendous power to both cure and kill.”11 Like medications themselves, which are massproduced and are also starkly personal, experiences of illness are shared by a wide range of people but also are deeply and personally felt. The ramifications of such experiences reshape the lives of those who recover and those who nurture the dying. “Often outside of our control, health and sickness radically affect who and what we are,” Fishman writes. “Biology, genetics, and environment—these are all parts of our destiny.”12 These are paintings of our time, when the opioid crisis kills an average of 130 Americans per day.13 As the paintings anneal and elucidate personal grief, they also reflect back onto a shared grief. Encircling the promising geometric doses of medication with panicked color and dislocated form, Fishman’s works sound, within a corporate idiom, a hard visual siren.

As Fishman’s paintings deconstruct pill shapes, her works’ fluorescent colors—used in safety applications to ensure visibility—cling to the eye. Glaring hues remain ghostlike on the retina despite the equanimity of cool geometric shapes and the glassy edging of neutral gray-white or black fields. “By harmonizing with the immaculate surfaces of the commodities around it, we repress thoughts of our own decline,” Fishman explains. “Color draws and excites us—it evokes spirituality and transcendence—but it also suggests death and despair.”14

10. Beverly Fishman, Wri!en interview, December 1, 2019 11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. “America’s Drug Overdose Epidemic: Data to Action,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, statistics current as of September 4, 2019. h!ps://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/prescription-drug-overdose/index.html.

The wall-facing edges that sometimes bevel toward the wall reflect slick fluorescent coats of green or orange into what Fishman calls a “vaporous glow.”15 The similarly slicked insides of Fishman’s pill-forms haze the white walls behind them with reflected fluorescence, their hard-bright surfaces glow—sometimes warmly, sometimes disconcertingly. Hard and glossy, the urethane paint Fishman uses is the same plastic coating used for painting cars. Yet, underneath the glimmering surfaces of Fishman’s works lie starkly terrestrial cores; her works are made of wood. Their pigmented plastic coatings, laid without a brushstroke’s trace, hide the wood armatures beneath a candy-like shell. Like the pert angles of the pills they appropriate, Fishman’s works disguise their contents.

Against the fresh white walls of the gallery, Fishman’s works glow with the uncomfortable distance between hope—the pills slick and secure in signature angles—and the suffering and loss that haunt our present. Asked about the exhibition’s title in relation to these works, Fishman replies, “A meditation on the end of life.”16 If these paintings are altarpieces, they show us some vision beyond the bare corporeal facts on the ground.

But they might be closer to idols, with their seductive, enthralling exteriors concealing the humble wooden stuff of which they’re made. Like most idols, they’re just like us: upright in the world despite the base facts of our matter and the physical reality to which we all ultimately succumb. These are paintings that level with us even as they dazzle us with the precise geometry of an art historical legacy that transmutes visceral experience into geometry. Fishman’s paintings accompany those of us who have loved people we couldn’t save and remind us how brightly even the most brutal fact can be made to glow. These open shapes cast reflected light into their hollowed-out centers. They lift our eyes toward gods we have made and dismantled, and the ways they reflected light. They recall a dream of sleep; they backlight a vision of absence that we live.

Amy Rahn, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Art History and the Charles Danforth Gallery Director at the University of Maine at Augusta.

She has wri!en extensively on modern and contemporary women painters. Her forthcoming essay in the Joan Mitchell catalogue published

by Yale University Press for the artist’s 2020 retrospective, (at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), considers an early 1960s painting included in the exhibition.

14. Beverly Fishman, Wri!en interview, December 1, 2019.

15. Ibid.

16. Beverly Fishman, email correspondence with the author, December 16, 2019, Unpublished.

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Untitled (Digestive Problems, Asthma, Depression, Depression), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 51 x 116 inches 129.5 x 294.6 cm

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Untitled (Bipolar, Anti-Psychotic, Sleepiness, Depression), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 52 x 106 inches 132.1 x 269.2 cm

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Untitled (High Blood Pressure, Sleepiness, Anti-Psychotic, Opioid Addiction, Two Doses), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 50 x 100 1â „2 inches 127 x 255.3 cm

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Untitled (Depression, Open), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 44 x 44 inches 111.8 x 111.8 cm

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Untitled (Asthma, Parkinson’s Disease), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 79 1⠄2 x 44 inches 201.9 x 111.8 cm

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Untitled (High Cholesterol, Epilepsy), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 80 x 44 inches 203.2 x 111.8 cm

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Untitled (ADHD, Missing Dose), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 42 x 42 1â „2 inches 105.4 x 108 cm

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Untitled (Depression, Missing Dose), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 42 1â „2 x 44 inches 108 x 111.8 cm

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Untitled (Epilepsy, Anxiety, Depression), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 43 x 41 inches 109.2 x 104.1 cm

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Untitled (Split Anxiety), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 42 x 39 inches 106.7 x 99.1 cm

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Untitled (Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Disorder), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 43 x 39 inches 109.2 x 99.1 cm

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Untitled (Chronic Pain, Pain, Pain), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 96 x 70 inches 243.8 x 177.8 cm

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Untitled (Opioid Addiction, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, GERD), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 77 1â „2 x 96 inches 196.9 x 243.8 cm

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Untitled (Pain, Opioid Addiction, Bipolar Disorder, Muscle Spasms), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 90 x 69 1â „4 inches 228.6 x 175.9 cm

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Untitled (Migraine, Anxiety, ADHD), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 77 x 84 inches 195.6 x 213.4 cm

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Untitled (Opioid Addiction, Empty Dose), 2020 Urethane paint on wood 44 1⁄2 x 42 1⁄4 inches 113 x 107.3 cm

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Untitled (Anxiety, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Anti-Psychotic, 1â „4 Tab Opioid Addiction), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 44 x 96 inches 111.8 x 243.8 cm

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Untitled (Opioid Addiction, ADHD, Insomnia), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 39 1⁄2 x 39 1⁄2 inches 100.3 x 100.3 cm

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Untitled (Pain, Diabetes, Depression, Depression, Depression), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 52 1â „2 x 100 1â „4 inches 133.4 x 254.6 cm

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Untitled (Diabetes, Pain, Insomnia, Abortion), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 44 x 82 1â „4 inches 111.8 x 208.9 cm

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Untitled (Anxiety, Anxiety, High Blood Pressure), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 43 x 43 inches 109.2 x 109.2 cm

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Untitled (Pain, Opioid Addiction, ADHD), 2019 Urethane paint on wood 43 x 43 inches 109.2 x 109.2 cm

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back row, le& to right:

Anxiety, 2019 middle row, le& to right:

Urethane paint on wood 33 1⁄2 x 32 1⁄4 x 5 inches 85.1 x 81.9 x 12.7 cm

Anxiety and Stress, 2019

Opioid Addiction, 2019

front row:

Urethane paint on wood 27 x 48 x 6 inches 68.6 x 121.9 x 15.2 cm

Asthma, 2019

Anxiety and Stress, 2019

Intermi'ent Claudication, 2019

Urethane paint on wood 12 1⁄2 x 13 1⁄2 x 3 inches 31.8 x 34.3 x 7.6 cm

Urethane paint on wood 19 x 30 x 6 inches 48.3 x 76.2 x 15.2 cm

Urethane paint on wood 36 x 40 x 5 inches 91.4 x 101.6 x 12.7 cm

Urethane paint on wood 26 1⁄2 x 27 x 4 inches 67.3 x 68.6 x 10.2 cm

BEVERLY FISHMAN Born in Philadelphia, PA in 1955 Lives and works in Detroit, MI

EDUCATION 1980 MFA, Yale University, New Haven, CT

2013 “Focus: Beverly Fishman,” Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI “Artificial Paradise,” Wasserman Projects, Birmingham, MI

1977 BFA, Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA

2012 “Pill Spill,” Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

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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

2020 “I Dream of Sleep,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2019 “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

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 “Beverly Fishman,” Pulse Art Fair, New York, NY “Pharmaco-Xanadu,” Bruno David Gallery Projects Space, 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 “Beverly Fishman,” Daimler Chrysler Galerie, Berlin, Germany 2004 “Ecstasy,” Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, France 2003 “happy happy,” SolwayJones Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Pharmakon,” Wellcome Trust, London, United Kingdom “From Here to There,” Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI 2002 “Beverly Fishman,” Boom Gallery, Oak Park, IL 2001 “Feel Good,” Gallery 2211 SolwayJones, 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 Ma!er,” 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,” Mo! 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

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 “Shape, Ra!le, and Roll,” Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY “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,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC

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2018 “Grafik,” Harper’s Books, East Hampton, NY “Xeriscape - Nina Chanel Abney, Rosson Crow, Beverly Fishman, Tschabalala Self and Wendy White,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “Front International” (curated by Michelle Grabner), Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH “Public Ma!er,” Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI “Primary,” Korn Gallery, Dorothy Young Center for the Arts, Drew University, Madison, NJ “‘Spieltrieb’: Polly Apfelbaum, Beverly Fishman, Ryan Mrozowski, Kathleen Ryan,” Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY

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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,” Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY “She Rocks,” Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY 2016 “Sensuous/Pensive: At Odds and Overlapping” (curated by Donald Kuspit and Casey Gleghorn), Booth Gallery, New York, NY “Painting/Object,” Library Street Collective, Los Angeles, CA “Super Sketchy,” DCTV, New York, NY “New Works by Daniel Brice, Tim Forcum, Beverly Fishman, Dion Johnson, Joe Lloyd, John Schlue, Christian Tedeschi, and Wayne White,” Western Project @ JAUS, Los Angeles, CA 2015 “Going Big,” Central Booking, New York, NY “Compendium,” The Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY “The Brain, Sun Valley Center for the Arts,” Ketchum, ID “Post-Op: The Responsive Eye Fi#y Years A#er,” David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2014 “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 “Sha!ered: Contemporary Sculpture in Glass,” Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI “Heads, Shoulders…,” Florida State University Museum of Fine Art, Tallahassee, FL 2012 “Segment #3,” Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey “Art on Paper,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 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 Cranbrook 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 Le!ers, New York, NY “Invitational,” American Academy of Arts and Le!ers, New York, NY 2009 “Infinitesimal Eternity: Images Made in the Face of Spectacle,” 32 Edgewood Gallery, 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 “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 “The Inland See” (curated by James Yood), Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI “Optical Edge” (curated by Robert C. Morgan), Pra! Manha!an 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 SolwayJones, Los Angeles, CA “Group Show,” SolwayJones, Los Angeles, CA 2001 “The Benefit Art Auction,” Museum of Contemporary Art, 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,” Cra# 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

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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 (1977–1994),” 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

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

1992 “Beneath the Surface,” 148 Gallery, New York, NY “Morphologic,” Art in General, New York, NY “Beyond Nature,” Marymount Manha!an College Gallery, New York, NY

1988–92 Instructor, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD

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,” Massachuse!s College of Art, Boston, MA 1988 “Hybrids,” Addison Ripley Gallery, Washington, D.C. “Blum, Coyne, Fishman,” John Slade Ely House, New Haven, CT

1985 “Works on Paper,” Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT

SELECTED TEACHING EXPERIENCE 1992–2019 Artist-in-Residence and Head of Painting, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI

1983–92 Associate Professor (adjunct), Graduate Art School, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY 1987 Visiting Assistant Professor, Connecticut College, New London, CT

AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES

SELECT COLLECTIONS

2018 Anonymous Was A Woman Award

Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA

2015 GAPP Developmental Artist Residency, Toledo Museum of Art 2011 Guest Artist Pavilion Project, Toledo Museum of Art

Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

2010 Hassam, Speicher, Be!s, and Symons Purchase Award, American Academy of Arts and Le!ers

Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI

2008 Nomination for Kresge Eminent Artist Award 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT Kresge Art Museum, East Lansing, MI MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL

2003 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award

Ma!atuck Museum, Waterbury, CT

1990 Artist Space Exhibition Grant NEA Fellowship Grant

Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL

1986 Artist Space Emergency Materials Fund

Stamford Museum & Nature Center, Stamford, CT

Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH 1979 Yale University Ford Foundation Special Project Grant Yale University Ford Foundation Summer Study Grant

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC

1977 Philadelphia College of Art Weber Award for Excellence in Painting

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

BEVERLY!FISHMAN I!DREAM!OF!SLEEP 2 April – 9 May 2020 Miles McEnery Gallery 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2020 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2020 Amy Rahn Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-28-1 Cover: Untitled (High Blood Pressure, Sleepiness, Anti-Psychotic, Opioid Addiction, Two Doses) (detail), 2019