Tom Friedman - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, November 16, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
    Sale: Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Contemporary Art Part I, November 10, 2005, lot 12
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the present lot, Tom Friedman has taken the common drinking straw and elevated it from a common disposable object to one of fne art. With his trademark touch of whimsy and tongue-in-cheek humor he has constructed a sculpture that is at once base in its comedic references but at the same time possesses a complexity of form and design that allows one to overlook the subject matter. The sharp linearity and random arrangement of the straws comprising the figure instill qualities akin to those of a line drawing. It is as if Friedman has projected a drawing in three dimensions with the original medium of the drinking straw.

    In describing his sculptural work, art critic Midori Matsui states, “Tom Friedman’s sculptural works radically modify our view of things…. made of mundane, frequently expendable materials. They evoke meditation on the interconnectedness of natural and industrial worlds, even suggesting that the human mind body and inanimate
    things are all involved in the same process of meditation.” (M. Matsui, “Mapping Your World: Tom Friedman’s Flexible sculpture”, Parkett, Zurich, No. 64, 2002).

  • 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

130

Untitled

2004
plastic drinking straws
78 3/4 x 59 x 29 1/2 in. (200 x 149.9 x 74.9 cm)

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Contemporary Art Day Sale

16 November 2012
New York