Tom Friedman

Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by American artist Tom Friedman.

Tom Friedman relentlessly invents intricate objects out of a range of household materials, such as styrofoam, masking tape, pencils, toilet paper, spaghetti, toothpicks and bubble gum. His work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both beautiful and playful. Though it is linked to 1960s Conceptualism and Minimalism, Friedman's vision and working method goes beyond these historical precedents creating its own unique visual language.

Friedman's ability to transform common objects into something new enables him to elevate the ordinary to the status of art. In this exhibition of sixteen new works, an interest in process and material continues to be a consistent point of departure for the artist. For example, Friedman has created four Lucky Charm cereal boxes by deconstructing a single Lucky Charm box. Also included in the show is a vertical construction of consumer products with cut outs of famous faces and a vertical colour graded column of ordinary styrofoam drinking cups stacked elegantly with pleasing precision. All of these works are informed by a centred internal logic that reveals the tacit systems at work in our daily lives through which we funnel our physical and mental realities. By investigating the relationship between the everyday and the art experience, Friedman's art offers indispensable insights into new ways in which to view the world.

Solo exhibitions of Tom Friedman's work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1995 and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. His first mid-career retrospective ran from 2000 to 2002 and toured to the following venues: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco; Southeastern Centre for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. In the autumn of 2002, Tom Friedman will have an exhibition at the Prada foundation in Milan.

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Tom Friedman