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" When you think about it, it&amp;#039;s almost absurd\u2014the mutual contempt felt by those who partake of religious ecstasy and those who seek it in tablet form. But why? Doesn&amp;#039;t it just come down to a different brand of transcendence? If there&amp;#039;s ever a summit between the two camps, one thing is certain, New York painter Fred Tomaselli should do the banners. The complications and similarities of spiritual and pharmaceutical euphoria are totally swept aside\u2014no, swept up\u2014in Tomaselli&amp;#039;s feverishly beautiful visions, where drugs and faith are as integral as they are in the current national debate.  Not that the 48-year-old painter has any kind of political ax to grind. Like any good artist, Tomaselli is really only interested in his own vision. That is, in this case, a kind of dys-utopian garden that brings to mind a disturbing medley of other artists: the chemico-fantastic realism of Frank Moore, the surreal decorative frenzy of Piero Fornasetti, the obsessive fantasies of outsider artist Henry Darger, even the allegories of Hieronymus Bosch. Tomaselli&amp;#039;s work also recalls the phenomenon known as phosphenes, the kaleidoscope of color that erupts when you close your eyes and press your fingers against them, or, if you prefer, the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland.  Actually, both were inspirations. Having grown up in Los Angeles, that postmodern Garden of Eden, Tomaselli can even point to his own version of original sin to which he is constantly reacting and referring\u2014that late-1970s moment when, as an art student getting his kicks in the burgeoning L.A. punk scene, he saw the California dream start to morph into something darker and more destructive\u2014the 1980s. &amp;quot;Fantasy had become the ascendant reality,&amp;quot; Tomaselli remembers. Inspired by artists like Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari, whose canvases and photoworks were cheerily puncturing the myth of California sunshine and harmless sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Tomaselli began making installations\u2014then collages and paintings\u2014that merged a kind of Edenic escapism with a dose of morning-after disillusionment. They can be read as spectacular schematic maps of what he calls &amp;quot;the mechanisms of reality avoidance.&amp;quot; You don&amp;#039;t just get the party; Tomaselli throws in a hint of hangover as well.  It&amp;#039;s not immediately evident, however. At first, some of his paintings can look like the benignly decorative product of an obsessive-compulsive decoupagist. But contemplate the lovely snowflakes, banners, and whorls in his paintings, and the sinister patterns of chemical bonding bubble to the surface. Those white and pastel dots, lozenges, and capsules embedded, along with myriad color images, in layers of clear resin are in fact pills\u2014straight out of a prescription bottle. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a safe way to use drugs,&amp;quot; the artist says with his trademark mix of sarcasm and sincerity. &amp;quot;Instead of taking them through your mouth, you take them through your eyes\u2014they don&amp;#039;t get into your bloodstream that way.&amp;quot;  The pills and the rest of Tomaselli&amp;#039;s raw materials, including digital photos of eyes, hands, birds, butterflies, snakes, and leaves, neatly embody that magical quality he refers to as &amp;quot;potentiality,&amp;quot; by which he means possibilities, visions, and levels of enlightenment yet to be attained. And with their fly-in-amber appeal, the paintings relate to drugs as Pop artifacts, which, in their natural state, locked away in elaborate &amp;quot;wasteful packaging,&amp;quot; hold out the promise of\u2014as the hair-color commercial famously put it\u2014you, only better.  And Tomaselli, unlike so many artists, doesn&amp;#039;t bridle at the thought that his paintings could be taken as decorative. &amp;quot;When I moved to New York in the &amp;#039;80s, there was this prevailing aesthetic that was very much about&amp;quot;\u2014he gropes for the word\u2014&amp;quot;junk. I really didn&amp;#039;t want to be part of that.&amp;quot; Steering away from efforts, whether cynical, political, or artistic, to portray the world as a garbage heap, Tomaselli made his escape. He and his wife, Laura Miller, bought a house in Brooklyn with a backyard, where, he says, he can live the Southern California dream much better than he ever could back home. It proved a canny maneuver. His work sells out, a solo exhibition recently traveled through Europe, and in the fall he&amp;#039;s returning to L.A. for a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The title\u2014what else?\u2014is &amp;quot;Ecstasy.&amp;quot; \u2014This article originally appeared in the May 2005 issue.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/a2897/art-show-fred-tomaselli-a-67135/>