tom friedman. he gets his art supplies from drugstores, candy stores, the human body, and the supermarket .................................................................
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tom friedman the largest and most complete retrospective of the artist's work prada foundation, milan 24 october - december 2002 http://www.fondazioneprada.org the exhibition project, conceived by friedman for the space at the fondazione prada in milan, consists of a show that includes thirtyeight works created over the period 1989-2002. a dozen new ones and the other borrowed from museums and collectors. 'I make work for specific exhibitions. I move from piece to piece, working on each a little time, my ideas develop through this process. I know I am finished when each piece achieves a sense of conceptual clarity and when the relationships between the works keep building upon each other.' friedman says. tom friedman's funny and clever sculptures are passive-aggressive, we see them through the eyes of the outsider, the alien, the artist. looking at these sculptures is sort of like looking too closely in the mirror and seeing fields of blackheads on your otherwise lovely and photogenic nose. but at the same time things are simpler here on friedman's side. there is humor in his work, but it is very modest and lightly dispensed. the exquisite fragility is very relaxing. simple and sometimes trivial ideas are taken to the extreme of credibility. his pieces are descriptive but devoid of content, and others spatially empty while inhabited by history. --- material he gets his art supplies from drugstores, candy stores, the human body, and the supermarket. 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. friedman's ability to transform common objects into something new, his devotion to material perfection, the way he conceptualizes the action of the artisan, enables him to elevate the ordinary to the status of art. --- mental and physical manipulation friedman's art it is linked to 1960s conceptualism, arte povera and minimal to land art. but his vision and working method goes beyond these historical precedents creating its own unique visual language. that of the minute and microscopic, in which his investigations focuses on the smallness of things. 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. --- sculptures balancing in a precarious equilibrium may appear paradoxical, because of the unusual materials they are made from: a ring of plastic cups; a dense mass of pencil sections, or the sculpture obtained by wedging some 30,000 toothpicks in order to create a fantastic geometric construction that recalls the structure of a starburst. 'a mentality based on atoms and tiny infinitesimal fragments,' according to germano celant, cuator of the exhibition 'leaning toward the sublime, magical atmosphere of a science fiction film by lucas or spielberg.' --- hair everyone knows, rather intimately, what a bar of soap is, or at least we think we do, until friedman shows up with his sculpture that changes the whole concept of soap into an object with a--sticky-when-wet--surface that holds spiralling pubic hairs perfectly in place. ultra-thin, circular lines expanding concentrically outwards from the center. he must have labored over this little enigmatic thing for hours. 'initially I was drawn towards materials that had to do with personal hygiene. cleaning materials...I drew a connection between mundane rituals for keeping ourselves clean, and rituals for spiritual purification.' friedman said. --- chewing gum when friedman chews 1,500 pieces of bubblegum to build a perfect sphere (untitled, 1990) that ends up wedged into a corner of the room as if it were, precisely, a piece of chewing gum, it is the knowledge of his quasi medieval investment of time that gives the piece its power. --- selfportraits 'untitled' (1994) this self-portraits is executed with painstaking obsessiveness on the face of an aspirin tablet. how will we ever be able to experience the white little aspirin pill with the same innocence as before? (how can we be sure it is acid-free?) 'untitled' (2000) a life size self-portrait. the artist portrays himself in a state of fragmentation produced by a motorcycle accident. body parts are scattered in a pool of blood, with organs and guts spilling out from the belly and the head splintered beyond recognition. it sounds horrible and, for a second or so, it also looks terrifying. but, the shock immediately dissolves into a prank. the sculpture on the floor is made from colored construction paper, carefully cut with scissors. detailed splatters, everything is reproduced, however, without negating the material being used. 'untitled' (2001) using a complex mathematical process, friedman dissected and re-configured 256 small, identical passport-style photographs into a large abstract self-portrait. the individual self-portraits were cut into 1/4-inch grids based on a series of nearly imperceptible 1/64-inch deviations. the 33,072 resulting squares were arranged, one by one, to create a large magnified, out-of-focus mosaic of the original image. --- food sometimes, as with 'loop' (1993-95), a sculpture made from a box of cooked spaghetti that have been attached end to end to form a single, loopy spiral, the process that friedman undertakes is both intricate and fraught with the possibility of a messy and frustrating failure. friedman probably played with his food a lot when he was a child. a two-volume publication have been issued by the fondazione prada, including the exhibition catalogue and artist’s book --- see the artist's biography --- --- ------- monthly designboom newsletter ------- ------- ? comments and contact us ? -------	'there', 2001 paper cube splat courtesy the artist 'untitled', 2001 paper figure lying down courtesy the artist 'untitled', 2001 selfportrait, out-of-focus mosaic of the original image courtesy fondazione prada 'untitled (box balls)', 2002 cardboard box and styrofoam balls courtesy the artist 'open' 2002 an open box courtesy fondazione prada 'untitled' , 2001 a tarantula made from artist's hair courtesy fondazione prada 'untitled', 2000 self portrait in a state of fragmentation produced by a motorcycle accident, made of paper. courtesy the artist tom friedman working on his installation at the prada fondation, milan 2002 courtesy fondazione prada 'untitled', 1999 soap and pubic hair courtesy the artist 'untitled', 1990 a ball of 1500 chewing-gumbetween two walls courtesy the artist 'untitled', 1994 self-portrait carved out of a single aspirin courtesy the artist