Tom Friedman - New Museum Benefit Auction New York Thursday, November 15, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Courtest of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    Quirky, yet refined, Tom Friedman’s ingenious artwork coalesces highminded concepts on art with the ubiquitous. Matter-of-fact materials such as toothpaste, styrofoam cups, toilet paper, pencil shavings, and string, as in the piece in this lot, are constructed to become descriptions of their own autonomous materiality. String, seemingly ephemeral and without volume, is elevated in status as object. Color is also often at the essence of these artworks. Rainbow assortments not only dazzle the eye, but are representative of the many experiences of the world. This ‘anti-monumental’ string encompasses and literally draws the colors of the UN flags, and therefore maximum diversity and perspectives. Mario Perniola asserts these aspects as Friedman’s affinity to Stoicism, “In the Stoic experience there is…the unceasing interchange between the upper and lower: a strange co-presence of profundity and futility, seriousness and frivolity, severity and worldliness, and austerity and tolerance is established, giving the Stoics an unmistakable style that has continued… and the tendency to see the most contradictory aspects of human existence together is typical of Stoicism.”  M. Perniola, “The Ecstasy of Everyday Existence,” Tom Friedman, Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2002, p. 25)

  • 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.

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28

UN

2006

Wall installation: personal UN flags.

108 1/2 x 163 in. (275.6 x 414 cm).
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and installation instructions.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $45,000

New Museum Benefit Auction

15 Nov 2007, 6.30pm
New York