Fred Tomaselli presents his new exhibition “Blooms Disrupted,” opening May 15 at James Cohan’s 48 Walker Street location in New York. The show features his signature densely layered resin paintings embedded with organic matter like leaves and pharmaceutical pills, alongside a new series of collages constructed from New York Times front pages. The anchor piece, *Month of August (evening)*, combines a geometric spiral of headlines with a photographic Mexican sunflower, while other works reference art-historical gardens such as Frederic Edwin Church’s estate. Tomaselli, a Brooklyn-based artist born in 1956, uses the garden as both subject and metaphor throughout the exhibition.
The exhibition matters because it juxtaposes the immersive, patient beauty of botanical growth with the relentless noise of contemporary news media, forcing viewers to reconsider what the culture prioritizes. Tomaselli’s collages, a practice spanning over two decades, gain new urgency by elevating underreported stories on climate, immigration, and political strife. “Blooms Disrupted” positions the garden not as passive scenery but as an active, destabilizing force—offering a timely artistic meditation on attention, crisis, and the natural world.