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Portrait of Laura

2015
Not on view
This "portrait" of the artist’s wife, Laura, belongs to an ongoing series he calls "chemical celestial portraits of inner and outer space." Tomaselli creates likenesses based on each sitter’s astrological sign and the star map for his or her date of birth. Placing sugar and pills on photographic paper and exposing it to light, he produces a photogram of the corresponding constellation and names the stars after the various drugs the subject remembers consuming, from cold medicine to cocaine. The result is an unconventional map of identity that cleverly weds the mystical and the pharmacological.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Portrait of Laura
  • Artist: Fred Tomaselli (American, born Santa Monica, California, 1956)
  • Date: 2015
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print with graphite
  • Dimensions: Image: 16 in. × 19 15/16 in. (40.6 × 50.6 cm)
    Mat: 24 3/4 × 25 3/4 in. (62.9 × 65.4 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2016
  • Object Number: 2016.5
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Fred Tomaselli
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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