Tom Friedman at Feature - New York

The distinction of "art" from "life" established around 1800 l within 100 years, to demands from various sides that the sum of two units be brought together. It is not the least striking sign of Tom Friedman's intelligence that he has managed to do something really novel about this done-to-death idea. He has typically made art without of "everyday" materials--hair, toothpaste, construction paper, plastic bags. Sometimes he transforms them into exquisite simulacra of other everyday items (insects, pills) or into large-scale versions of themselves (a giant dollar made of dollar bills). Others of his particulars are icons of their hold crossing of the art/life boundary: a tiny sphere of shit upon a pedestal (an homage to Manzoni's quip of decades past) or--at the opposite extremity of the matter-spirit spectrum--a piece of paper stared at for 1000 hours, presumably to be stared at by means of others for at least as drawn out in years to come. Friedman's realitys neither transcend nor critique the everyday; they are distinguished from it by dint of the wit, effort and craft place into making them.

This exhibition put tools, forms and conceptions of art obliquely against their normal uses. Canvas appeared in the form of sum of two units long threads, one painted white to match the wall against which it was almost invisible, the other richly colored to make the thinnest possible abstract painting. A large C-print was completely white reject for the brown top of someone's head just at its bottom cutting side Pencils served as materials for plastic art forming, for instance, a pencil as drawn out as a javelin. Pencil was also used to draw a squashed soar on the wall, creating an illusion of the three-dimensionality realized in another hover made of Play-Doh, plastic, hair, fuzz wire and paint. A pencil scribble upon paper was neatly cut without and hung on the wall; while the fairly graceless tangle of lines was itself of little interest, the proces by dint of which it was made into an particular fascinated. In contrast, another cutout affixed to the wall, an outline perspective rendering of a cardboard receptacle was not a drawing at all on the contrary rather was made out of cardboard--reality transformed into a representation of itself.

To the left of the take wing his head in-line with it, stood a construction-paper lad seemingly looking through a aperture in the wall; the vastness of the reality into which Nobody (as this statuary was titled) peered with similar childish naivete was revealed in Today, forehead and back page spread of the novel York Times (changed daily), upon which rested a tiny human figure of painted wood-land In the gallery's first latitude a fish swam in its glass beaker It would be hard not to be reminded of Matisse by dint of this presence, especially in this year of the Matisse-Picasso present to view but more central to Friedman's preoccupations was the place he made for living reality in his exhibition, drawing attention at one time to the pleasures and the limits of art.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group