Auction Catalogue

Tom Friedman pushes the materials, objects, and images of our everyday lives into new, often absurd, territory, and in the process forces us to slow down and reconsider them. 30,000′ incorporates the smallest bits of found metal objects to depict a human floating (yet tethered) to a planet below. The tiny nature of the welded objects highlights the extreme distance and scale of the scene. Anchored to the weight of the sphere below, the figure hovers above the viewer, moving and swaying as if drifting upward to outer space. Solo exhibitions of Tom Friedman’s work have been held at the MoMA, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Prada Foundation in Milan. His first mid-career retrospective ran from 2000 to 2002 and toured the following venues: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco; Southeastern Centre for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem; Aspen Art Museum; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Friedman’s work is in numerous public collections, including the Dallas Museum of Art; MoMA, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.