{"product_id":"tom-friedman-phaidon-contemporary-artists-series","title":"Tom Friedman (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe work of Tom Friedman (b.1965) captures for many the essence of art at the beginning of a new century. It is modest in scale  imaginative and ecological  painstakingly crafted and unheroic. Friedman suggests a new direction in art: post video  post political\/identity issues  post digital media  post ready-mades.  Friedman works in a windowless studio (more like a playground-kitchen-laboratory) in rural Massachusetts  relentlessly inventing these startling ephemeral objects out of the stuff in my house: bits of Styrofoam  packing material  bottle tops  pencil shavings  plastic straws  dental floss  spaghetti  toothpicks  bubble gum. Some of his works are too delicate to move  existing solely in photographs and  above all  in the imagination. This is art that  to quote New York Times critic Roberta Smith  raises wonderful questions about the making and seeing of art: about paying attention  about how we spend our time  and about the pleasures of small transformations producing sudden beauty.  Solo exhibitions of Friedmans works have been held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and at The Art Institute of Chicago. A major exhibition of his work  Tom Friedman: The Epic in the Everyday toured in 2000-2 to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago  the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco  the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem  North Carolina.  American art critic Bruce Hainley examines the artists work as a kind of giant self-portrait. Poet and novelist Dennis Cooper discusses with the artist such unexpected influences as contemporary electronic music. Guardian art critic Adrian Searle looks at the artists work Untitled  1993: a ring of plastic cups in a home-made Minimalist tradition. The Artists Choices are The Dinner Party (1919) by Swiss writer Robert Walser  and the glossary to Info-Psychology (1975-6) by Timothy Leary  the cult psychologist who advocated the use of psychedelic drugs. Facsimiles of the artists notebooks and text works are published alongside an important interview by renowned curator Robert Storr.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44963352018997,"sku":"ByrdShop_0714839868","price":58.68,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780714839868.jpg?v=1770412968","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/tom-friedman-phaidon-contemporary-artists-series","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}