Gravity's Rainbow by Fred Tomaselli

[David Morris]

http://collection.whitney.org/object/12463

At a glance, Gravity’s Rainbow (Large) appears to be composed of looping
jewel-like strands of colors, elegantly layered against a black background.
Close inspection, however, reveals that to make this monumental work, Fred
Tomaselli embedded thousands of pills—ranging from prescription
pharmaceuticals to street drugs to colorfully painted placebos—along with
magazine cutouts and hemp leaves, in layers of transparent resin. This
dazzling pharmaceutical array alludes to the power of art, like that of
recreational drugs, to alter our perceptions and transport us to other
worlds. The title originates with Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 cult novel Gravity’s
Rainbow, in which the phrase “gravity’s rainbow” refers to the arced
trajectory of a V-2 rocket falling on war-torn London during World War II—a
shape echoed in the graceful arcs spanning the work. This allusion to
impending destruction parallels the metaphorical implications of
Tomaselli’s pharmaceutical chains: the beauty that transports us in his
image has a dark, toxic underside.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170201/cae4fccb/attachment.html>