“I am a contrarian. The world is so loud right now, and getting even louder. I am trying to lead people back into their inner self, as opposed to outside themselves.”
Tom Friedman
(b. St. Louis, MO, 1965)
Fluctuating between the comical and conceptual, Tom Friedman’s sculptures and drawings explore the relationship between perception and logic. His work confounds expectations through meticulous details often masked by a seemingly mass-produced or prefabricated appearance. What might first appear to be a simple, stable structure is, on closer inspection, intricately constructed from unexpected, vernacular materials such as Styrofoam, flock, wire, or even the artist’s own hair. Inhabiting the boundary between reality and illusion, Friedman’s playful works challenge everyday processes of perception and notions of artistic value.
Friedman’s solo exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2000); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1995). Looking Up, a larger-than-life sculpture of a figure contemplating the sky, was installed at the entrance of Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens in January 2021 with an edition permanently installed at the Contemporary Austin, Texas. Friedman’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Tom Friedman lives and works in Massachusetts.
