Beverly Fishman (b. 1955) is a multi-disciplined artist whose provocative, visually electrifying oeuvre positions her as an authoritatively contemporary aesthetic voice. Combining the handmade with the industrial, Fishman employs a variety of techniques to explore technological, scientific, and biological systems of perception and representation, instigating constructive conversations about the ways people see their bodies and minds and construct their identities. Her most illustrious bodies of work engage with the visual language of the medical industrial complex. For example, her highly-polished Pill reliefs utilize iconic pharmaceutical forms as the basis for seemingly abstract compositions that radiate with colour. Her brilliantly complex Dividose paintings appropriate the unsettling, multilayered, linear aesthetic of medical imaging technologies such as EEG and EKG machines, provoking levels of optical fascination capable of eliciting physiological responses from viewers.

Fishman has relentlessly sought out new materials and processes in order to realize her evolving vision. Her materials list has included traditional supports such as wood, paper, blown glass and aluminium, as well as more unconventional elements like cast resin, mirrored Plexiglass, powder-coated metal and phosphorescent pigments. She also frequently uses mediums like chrome and urethane automotive paint that speak in conversation with the legacy of the Detroit area, where she has lived and worked as the Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Painting Department of the Cranbrook Academy of Art since 1992.

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