Tom Friedman - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, May 13, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami

  • Catalogue Essay

    JOHN MILLER: Your work sometimes reminds me of a book I grew up: Fun With Next To Nothing. It told you things like how to make an airplane out of popsicle sticks or a wall plaque out of bottle caps.

    TOM FRIEDMAN: Well, that’s not surprising. I like it to have a sense of being at home.

    JOHN MILLER: Why “home?”

    TOM FRIEDMAN: I like the connection to everyday materials, things just sitting around the house. For me, home just means “being yourself.” You don’t have to go outside to know more; you already have everything you need. I don’t think of learning as an additive process. Instead, your mind rearranges itself in certain ways. It’s interesting to think that all the potential knowledge is already there.

    (Tom Friedman with John Miller, "Index Magazine," 1998)

  • Artist Biography

    Tom Friedman

    American • 1965

    Tom Friedman is a multimedia artist working mainly in sculpture and works-on-paper. Interested in looking at the thin line between fantasy and autobiography, Friedman often creates works that push viewers into a complicit state of witnessing. His sculptures are composed of a multitude of objects, and he assembles them in such a way as to transform the mundane into an intricate work of art. He combines materials such as Styrofoam, foil, paper, clay, wire, hair and fuzz through a labor-intensive practice that seeks to tell a story, whether about himself or the world at large.

    Friedman's approach to autobiography is not memoiristic. Rather, he takes the smallest moments of his life, like a piece of paper found on the street, and blows it out of proportion.

    View More Works

141

Untitled (pink and blue)

2004
Polystyrene and Styrofoam packing peanuts assembled with glue; artist's wood platform and Plexiglas vitrine (vitrine not illustrated).
Overall installed dimensions: 45 x 62 x 45 in. (114.3 x 157.5 x 114.3 cm.)

Signed, titled and dated "Tom Friedman, Untitled 2004 (pink and blue)" on the artist's Styrofoam box.


Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

Contemporary Art Part II

13 May 2011
New York