Tom Friedman (b. 1965, Saint Louis, MO; lives and works in Leverett, MA) is a conceptual artist known for his meticulously disparate works, including sculpture, painting, drawing, video, and installation. Friedman investigates the concepts of perception, logic, and the cosmology of being. Since the early 1990s, Friedman has utilized and invented a multitude of processes unique to each artwork. His work engages the full spectrum between maximalist and minimalist aesthetics, and anti-aesthetics, recalling the Dadaists, Futurists, Arte Povera, and Pop Art.
Friedman says he is not a professional artist, and he’s not really an artist, more a philosopher. His work tends toward the darkly humorous, and his often-sarcastic use of materials has distinguished his practice over the last 30 years. Made from a wide variety of unconventional materials, such as Styrofoam, aluminum foil, toilet paper, bubble gum, soap and hair, Friedman’s work plays on the unpredictable. You never know what to expect. As Roberta Smith, formerly of the New York Times writes, “The artist Tom Friedman tends to blow our minds then move on, rarely repeating himself.”
