Tom Friedman's exhibit at the Fabric Workshop and Museum is tucked away on the fifth floor of the scaffolding encrusted Gilbert Building just off of Arch Street, accessible only by an elevator that virtually begs you not to exceed its weight limit.
The incredibly spare presentation--a nearly-vacant expanse of white walls that still smell faintly of fresh paint--gives the unsettling first impression of being in the wrong room, or that perhaps you were mistaken, and the museum hasn't finished setting up the exhibit yet.
The artwork, mostly spartan single-material pieces constructed from fabric, paper, string, or wire, demands that the viewer move in for a closer look. Friedman's is the kind of exhibit where you find yourself self-consciously staring at a nail in the wall, wondering if it's a statement about minimalist artwork you shouldn't overlook, or just a commoplace nail and here you've been staring at it for 38 seconds now with all the real art critics thinking you are an ignorant jack-ass.
Upon closer inspection (and a hint from the curator), the `nail' turns out to be a miniscule sculpture of a human figure. You're glad you stuck around. One of the most striking features of the exhibit is an outline piece scratched directly onto the white display wall. A series of careful, even lines radiating out from an open center, it looks like the fading echo of a cartoon explosion. Another eye-catcher is the stunning self-portrait created by a technique called "matrixing", which produces a pointilist effect using fragments of photographs. Most of Friedman's pieces are more understated, but they embody a unique style of artistic allure.
Ultimately, it's clear that the mode of display--a seemingly empty room--was deliberate, rather than stemming from a lack of funding. The whole idea is not to see the artwork until you're upon it. Thus, Friedman's collection cultivates an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque apprehensive excitement in the viewer waiting in anticipation for the Cheshire Cat to appear from behind a sallow white wall.
