Lehmann Maupin presents Detritus, an exhibition of new work by Tom Friedman, marking the artist’s first major show in New York in almost 10 years. Over the course of his nearly-four-decade career, Friedman’s oeuvre has explored materials and the object, photography and drawing, video exhibitions, and public sculptural installations, continuously pushing his work into new terrains. As critic Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times, “the artist Tom Friedman tends to blow our minds and then move on, rarely repeating himself.” In Detritus, Friedman makes his most drastic leap yet—into the world of traditional painting on canvas.

Painting is not entirely new to Friedman, who has investigated the medium in previous works and in non-traditional formats, such as painting on the floor, on sculptural elements, and through the use of trompe l’oeil. In his 2014 series Styrofoam and Paint, he presented a series of wall works that resembled monochromatic Color Field paintings. Now, in Detritus, Friedman presents, as he states, “not painting on something else, over something else, or painting on paper or wood, but painting on canvas,” allowing the works to enter an art historical lineage. His approach here is consistent with his practice overall—rooted in cycles of entropy, erosion, recycling, and review. The compositions on view in Detritus depict the exhibition’s namesake: garbage scraps from the ground, fragments of previous sculptures, or discarded packaging, all sourced from the artist’s own life.