Beverly Fishman

Untitled 009, 2007
Silkscreened vinyl on powder coated metal.
Untitled 010, 2007
Silkscreened vinyl on powder coated metal.

I’m Beverly Fishman, I’m an artist. My work comes from a large pool of medical imagery that I cull from medical texts and on the Internet. It’s then put into the computer, reworked, and made into silk screens and vinyl collage cutouts, which is then handmade on powder-coated metal or polished stainless steel. The most recent incarnation is including wall paper in my installations, which will become part of the meaning.

Why do I work? Ever since I was four years old, I had my first set of oil paints. Art chose me, I didn’t choose art. I’ve been involved with this process really before I could describe the process or understand the process and it has continued on.

This is the latest incarnation, but it started with talking about the human condition and using the cell. This was at least 20 years ago. I thought that the cell was a very powerful symbol of the self. So I’ve used pieces of the body, or abstract codes of the body, to talk about the larger human condition. And medical technology and technology in general have become such a strong impact on the way we live today and how we view ourselves. In abstract codes discussing the entire condition of the body, so an EKG patterns, we all know if it’s a flat line, it’s not a good sign. Those codes, like DNA codes that you see in here, or kinds of imprints that abstract technology has taken and represent the body in general.

Why do I do that? I think that it’s important for, in terms of the history of painting, to talk about current conditions. If painting, which has a very long history, doesn’t talk about the way in which we live today, for me it loses its meaning in society.