Tom Friedman (born 1965) is an American conceptual

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

. He was born in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, Missouri and received a BFA in graphic illustration from Washington University in St. Louis (1988) and an MFA in sculpture from the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...

(1990.). As a conceptual artist he works in diverse media including

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and a ...

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayo ...

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...

, and

installation Installation may refer to: * Installation (computer programs) * Installation, work of installation art * Installation, military base * Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...

. For over twenty years, Friedman has been investigating the viewer/object relationship, and "the space in between."Archived a
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He has held solo exhibitions at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

, New York], Yerba Buena Museum of Art, San Francisco, Magasin 3 in Stockholm, Sweden,

The New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New S ...

in New York, the

Tel Aviv Art Museum Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( he, מוזיאון תל אביב לאמנות ''Muzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut'') is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern and contemporary art from Israel and aroun ...

, and others. His work can be found in the museum collections of

MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; ...

, Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum, the Broad Art Museum, the

Solomon Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Friedman lives and works in

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England ...

, Massachusetts.

Work

Friedman’s sculpture is recognizable for its highly inventive and idiosyncratic use of materials like Styrofoam, foil, paper, clay, wire, plastic, hair, and fuzz. Working autobiographically, he uses painstaking, labor-intensive methods to recreate seemingly random elements from his life. In each piece, he pays obsessive attention to detail, particularly in the replication of the objects that surround him. Friedman brings humour and childlike wonder as well as grave philosophical issues to each work. With the art object as departure, he uses everyday, easily understood found materials. He says it's "enticing and seductive to start with the simple humble object that we all 'think' we know." His intent is to draw the viewer into the simple beauty and familiarity of a piece, and then invite them to investigate it further. Although much of the published work on Friedman's art focuses on the materials, it is ultimately about the tension produced through the phenomenological experience of observer, artwork, and space in between. He often refers to his process as "orchestrating an experience." He uses the art experience as a context for opening people’s minds to new ways of seeing, and thinking. To do so, he has developed a circular logic: a way of investigating the object and whittling it down to a core understanding of its metaphor and how it connects to the viewer, in their everyday life, and within societal and philosophical constructs, and then back to the object again.

Career

Friedman worked closely with

Feature Inc. Feature, also known as Feature Gallery and Feature Inc., opened in Chicago on April 1, 1984, with an exhibition of Richard Prince rephotographs. The gallery then moved to New York in 1988. Feature officially became Feature Inc. in January 1994. ...

for over 15 years. Feature was started in Chicago by Hudson. Friedman eulogized Hudson, saying, "He understood the development of an artist and their vision. He could see so clearly the evolution of consciousness of an artist, and he knew how to push the work to the next level." Friedman held his first solo exhibition in 1991 at Feature in New York. Three years later, he made his international debut in an exhibition at the Galleria Rauicci/Santamaria in Naples, Italy and the Galerie Analix in Geneva, Switzerland. His affiliation with Feature at this time led to a relationship with curator Robert Storr, which led to an exhibition in the Elaine Danhessier Project Series at MoMa in the spring of 1995 in tandem with Bruce Nauman's "Retrospective." Friedman was the 50th artist in the series, which focuses on emerging artists. An interview with Storr at this time yielded important information about Friedman’s process and circular logic. In 1996 Friedman exhibited with

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...

("Affinities: Chuck Close and Tom Friedman") at the Art Institute of Chicago, curated by

Madeleine Grynsztejn Madeleine Grynsztejn (born 1962) is the Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Grynsztejn became director in 2008. Life and education Grynsztejn was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, and London, England ...

. In that same year, Friedman participated in exhibitions in France and Italy, also working with curator Paul Schimmel in Brazil for the

Sao Paulo Biennale SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Saco Transportation Center (station code SAO), a train station in Saco, Maine, U. ...

. Notable works from this time period include, Everything (1992–1995), 1000 Hours of Staring (1992–1997), Untitled (Curse) (1992), Untitled (Aspirin Head) (1994) and Untitled (Toothpicks) (1995). In 1999 Friedman was one of five resident artists (including Byron Kim, Pauli Apfelbaum, Suzanne McClelland, Lorraine O'Grady) teaching at

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 6 ...

in Maine. Friedman met

John Waters John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...

, the visiting artist of that year, who later interviewed him for Parkett Magazine. In the interview Friedman spoke of his evolution as an artist over time, as well as the significance behind his art. On the humor of his work, Friedman said, "there's this misconception that playful thinking is not serious and it's not important." Between 2000–2002 a major exhibition of his work entitled, "Tom Friedman: The Epic in the Everyday", was organized by the

Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) is a multimedia contemporary art gallery in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. SECCA has no permanent collection but offers exhibitions of works by artists with regional, national, and international ...

(SECCA). The show was exhibited there, and traveled also to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, the

Aspen Art Museum Founded in 1979, the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) is a non-collecting contemporary art museum located in Aspen, Colorado. AAM exhibitions include drawings, paintings, sculptures Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in thr ...

, and the New Museum, New York. At this time Friedman was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim, an honor given to artists deemed the most innovative and influential of the time. In 2002 Friedman was invited to have a solo exhibition at the Fonadzione Prada, Milan, Italy, curated by

Germano Celant Germano Celant (11 September 1940 – 29 April 2020) was an Italian art historian, critic and curator who coined the term " Arte Povera" (poor art) in 1967 and wrote many articles and books on the subject. Work Germano Celant was born in Genoa ...

. A two volume catalogue was produced for the exhibition. Friedman held two solo exhibitions at

Gagosian Gallery Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in P ...

: "New Work" at the Beverly Hills gallery and "Monsters and Stuff" in London. Both shows yielded extensive monographs. In recent years, Friedman has built a portfolio of large-scale outdoor installations, beginning with Open Box (2007) and Circle Dance (2011), the latter being permanently installed on

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

campus in 2012. In 2015, Friedman's Looking Up (2015) was installed on

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...

in New York. Another rendition of the 33.3' figure is permanently installed at the Laguna Gloria campus of The Contemporary Austin Texas. Up in the Air, which debuted in 2010 at the Magasin III gallery in Stockholm, marked his first solo exhibition in a Scandinavian country. The installation, consisting of roughly 900 suspended sculptures, continued onto the Tel Aviv Museum of Art between 2014–2015. In 2016, Friedman exhibited works for a group exhibition co-curated by Denise Markonish and Sean Foley entitled "Explode Every Day" at Mass MoCA,

North Adams, Massachusetts North Adams is a city in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its population was 12,961 as of the 2020 census. Best known as the home of the largest contemporary ...

. Throughout 2016 and 2017 Friedman focused largely on standalone sculptures. Once standing on

, Looking Up (2015) was moved to Chicago's lakefront where it will permanently remain. In addition, a third edition of the piece was installed at the James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, Missouri. Friedman continued to work in a public forum, unveiling Huddle (2017), a 10x18 foot piece designed for the

Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...

installed at their training grounds. In late 2017, Friedman had a solo exhibition at Luhring Augustine entitled "Ghosts and UFOs: Projections for Well-Lit Spaces." The show, which consisted solely of projections, was a very dramatic shift from Friedman's previous chronology. While a departure from Friedman's past works,

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

praised it as, "effortlessly brilliant." In 2018, Friedman produced a large body of drawings for a solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery entitled, "Always The Beginning." The show was a reproduction and rendering of notebook pages from Friedman's sketchbooks spanning 30 years prior. In addition, Friedman released a new book of selected notes and sketches to accompany the work.

Artistry

In an interview with Los Angeles based writer

Dennis Cooper Dennis Cooper (born January 10, 1953) is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is best known for the ''George Miles Cycle'', a series of five semi-autobiographical novels published between 1989 and 2000 and describe ...

, Friedman spoke in depth on the process and thinking behind much of his art. He revealed to Cooper a disdain for much of his graduate work, which led him to reconsider his image as an artist. “At this point I sort of dropped the idea of making art; it was more about "discovering a beginning." Friedman remarked. During this time period he completely emptied his studio and created an all white isolation chamber in which he would meditate on objects he brought in from his home. Friedman began at this point to move towards self described radical stages of simplification focusing on the process of his work. In pieces like Untitled (1990), eraser shaving formed into a circle, Friedman focused on repetitive actions which became for him "almost like a mantra." This study of object is also evident in his 1990 writing, Ingredients, a list of all the questions one can ask about an object, organized into three main categories. The object, the location of the object, and the viewer. The questionnaire ended up being twenty pages long. In a 1997 interview with Hudson, Friedman elaborated on his creative process, "I play both the scientist and the experimental subject...it began as an intellectual process, but is evolving into an emotional understanding." Friedman also went on to say, "In my past work my ideas about change have been more about transformation: the material's transformation from what it is into something different. The ideas surrounding mutation and deviation are interesting to me not only in that they inform the transformation of materials, but also in how they evolve, and depart from each different branch of my investigation… the different ideas that I explore within a body of work range from ideas that opened things up for me, to unifying ideas that connect my separate branches of investigation." Friedman further elaborated on this claim in Irvine Fine Arts Center's, "Ideas in Things" in 1999, stating, "I'm involved in constructing this phenomenon of myself being absorbed by the work in such a way that one or the other of us is going to disappear - it into me or me into it."

Awards and recognition

Throughout his career, Friedman has received numerous awards. In 1993 he received both the

Louis Comfort Tiffany Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art NouveauL ...

Foundation Award and the Academy Award in Art from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

. Friedman also received a grant from The

Joan Mitchell Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Foundation in 2001. Between 1993–1995 he was the Luther Greg Sullivan Visiting Artist at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

and in 1999 he had a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpting in Skowhegan, ME. In 2013 Friedman received an Honorary Doctorate Degree in the Arts from the

Montserrat College of Art Montserrat College of Art is a private, non-profit art college located in Beverly within Essex County of Massachusetts. The school is accredited by both the New England Commission of Higher Education and the National Association of Schools of A ...

. Friedman's work has also been the subject of several books, including a feature in an eponymous Phaidon book. Charlotte Eyerman's ''Friedman: Up in the Air'' studies the solo exhibition of the same name indepth. Friedman himself has released two books, featuring commentary by

Arthur C. Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University. He was best known for having been a long-time art critic for ''The Nation'' and for his work in philosoph ...

Ralph Rugoff Ralph Rugoff (born 12 January 1957) is an American-born curator, the director of London's Hayward Gallery since 2006, and the curator of the Venice Biennale in 2019. Rugoff was born in New York City, the son of a film distributor father and a psy ...

, and Robert Storr, among others. Friedman has been featured extensively in magazines such as

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

and Frieze.

Selected exhibitions

*1992 - Bonzak Gallery, St.Louis, MO *1993 - Feature Inc., New York, NY *1994 - Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Naples, Italy *1995 - Project 50:Tom Friedman, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY *1996 - Affinities: Chuck Close and Tom Friedman, The Art Institute of Chicago *1997 - Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA *1997 - Ynglingagatan, Stockholm, Sweden *1997 - Feature Inc, New York, NY *1998 - Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK *1998 - Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME *1998 - Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan *1999 - Galeria Foksal, Warsaw, Poland *1999 - Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone, Rome, Italy *1999 - Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA *1999 - On the Ball: The Sphere in Contemporary Sculpture, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA *1999 - Waste Management 'Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada *2000 - Tom Friedman, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL *2001 - Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA *2001 - Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan *2002 - Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK *2002 - Stichting Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy *2002 - 177th Abbual Exhibition, National Academy of Design Museum, New York, NY *2002 - Sunday Afternoon,

303 Gallery 303 Gallery is an art gallery in Manhattan, New York. It was established in 1984 by owner and director Lisa Spellman, described by art critic Jerry Saltz as "one of the greatest New York gallerists of our time". The gallery hosts contemporary works ...

, New York, NY *2002 - Plotting, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL *2002 - FACE Off: a portrait of the artist, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK *2002 - Retrospectacle: 25 Years of Collecting Modern and Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO *2003 - Fright Wig, Feature Inc. New York, NY *2003 - Tom Friedman, Gaylen Gerber, Joe Scanlan, Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles, CA *2003 - Undomesticated Interiors, Smith College Museum of Art, Newport Center for Contemporary Art, Snung Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY *2003 - The Moderns, Castello di Rivoli Museo d?Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino, Italy *2003 - Stacked, D'Amelio Terras, New York, NY *2004 - Feature Inc, New York, NY *2004 - Self-Evidence:Identity in Contemporary Art, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA *2004 - Symbolic Space, The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY *2004 - Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan *2005 - Feature Inc, New York, NY *2006 - Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA *2007 - Pop Art Is..., Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, UK *2007 - Insight?, Gagosian Gallery, Moscow, Russia *2008 - for What you are about to receive, Gagosian Gallery, Moscow, Russia *2008 - Retrospective, Gagosian Gallery, 21st Street *2008 - Mosnters and Stuff, Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, UK *2008 - PRINTED MEDIA IN RECENT COLLAGE, Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York, NY *2009 - REAM, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO (solo) *2009 - Not Something Else, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto, Japan (solo) *2009 - Galerie Bernard Ceysson Beaubourg, Paris, France (solo) *2009 - Magic Show, QUAD Gallery, Derby, UK *2009 - Chasing Napoleon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France *2009 - Six Artists, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA *2009 - OFF THE WALL, Van de Weghe Fine Art, New York City, NY *2009 - Shaping Space, James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY *2010 - Up in the Air, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm; touring to FRAC Montpellier, France (solo) *2010 - Tom Friedman and Steve Wolfe, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK *2010 - Floor Corner Wall, Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Fort Worth, TX *2010 - The Boneyard, Maloney Fine Art, Culver City, CA *2011 - The Sculpture Park at Frieze Art Fair curated by David Thorp, London, UK *2011 - All that Glisters, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK *2012 - Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England *2014 - Up in the Air, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel *2014 - Gravity, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England *2015 - Looking Up, The Contemporary, Austin, Texas *2016 - Looking Up, 4800 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL *2016 - Looking Up, Park Avenue, New York, NY *2016 - Tom Friedman: Untitled (Foundation), Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA *2017 - Ghosts and UFOs: Projections for Well-Lit Spaces, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY *2017 - Huddle, The Star in Frisco, Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters and Practice Facility, Frisco, TX *2018 - Ghosts and UFOs: Projections for Well-Lit Spaces, Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA *2018 - Ghosts and UFOs: Projections for Well-Lit Spaces, Vista Mare Studio, Miilan, Italy *2018 - Always the Beginning, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England

References

External links

Tom Friedman at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
* Jo Applin, 'Bric-a-Brac: The Everyday Work of Tom Friedman', ''Art Journal'', Spring 2008
Tom Friedman at Ceysson Gallery
* Publication on the artis
Tom Friedman
Ceysson éditions d'Art, 2009 {{DEFAULTSORT:Friedman, Tom 1965 births Living people Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts alumni American conceptual artists Jewish American artists University of Illinois Chicago alumni Artists from St. Louis Sculptors from Missouri Washington University in St. Louis alumni