Tom Friedman: there’s no such thing as art

Entrance is pleased to present there’s no such thing as art, an exhibition by American conceptual artist Tom Friedman featuring new paintings and sculptures on both the gallery ground and lower level. At the root of Friedman’s practice is a sustained focus on labor and the messy, imperfect nature of humanity, often translated through quotidian materials and gestures that operate on both micro and macro scales. Through their transformation, these ordinary elements become vehicles for contemplating the vastness of being in all its forms— culture, science, nature, humanity, and religion— and therefore invite the viewer into a process of self-discovery.

“Instincts are not there when we are born. They accumulate over the years, becoming a thick veil of assumptions that make it impossible to see clearly” – Tom Friedman

In Friedman’s work, objects defy presumption and instead require a curious, engaged audience. Take the edge of infinity, 2026, for example: at first appearing to be the verso of a canvas, the work reveals itself upon closer inspection as a meticulously executed trompe-l’oeil painting that— with its “face” turned from the viewer— seems to reject its own classification as capital-A art. Similarly, why is there something and not nothing?, 2026, is a photo-realistic painting depicting a detailed field of footprints across a silty, sand-like landscape. In its grandeur, the image begins to evoke the iconic photographs of mankind’s first steps on the moon, while simultaneously conjuring the nostalgia of a public beach filled with numerous unknown bodies. Friedman’s practice frequently operates between these extremes of the grandiose and the mundane, allowing the familiar to become strange and the insignificant to become monumental.