20
Aug/16

TOM FRIEDMAN: LOOKING UP

20
Aug/16
(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tom Friedman’s “Looking Up” gazes up at the sky in the middle of busy Park Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SCULPTURE ON PARK AVE.
Park Ave. & 53rd St.
Extended through September 5
www.luhringaugustine.com
looking up slideshow

These are some tough times, but Tom Friedman insists things are looking up with his large-scale sculpture, “Looking Up,” which is standing tall on the Park Ave. mall at Fifty-Third St. Rising 33.3 feet high, “Looking Up” depicts an elongated figure bending his head back almost impossibly to get a look at the sky, which everyone in New York gazes up at a little differently since 9/11. The work is made using styrofoam, stainless steel, crushed aluminum foil roasting pans, and lost wax casting to achieve its retro feel; the Giacometti-like man hovers near Lever House, where Friedman’s site-specific “Aluminum Foil” exhibition was on view in 2007; one of the pieces from that show, “Aluminum Foil Buddha,” is back in Lever House, meditating in a glass case, creating quite a dichotomy with his rather larger compatriot outside. Friedman previously staged a memorable show in 2001 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art using such found objects as toothpicks, aspirin, pencil shavings, sugar cubes, and soap. “He’s actually an analog artist in a digital world,” curator Robert Hobbs says in a video about the piece before noting the Zen-like quality of his work. Make sure to get up close and personal with “Looking Up” (a joint project of Luhring Augustine, Stephen Friedman Gallery, the Fund for Park Avenue, and NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program) to check out the strange but cool detail of the roasting pans, consider the balance between humor and earnestness, and wonder what the giant might be looking at; just beware of the busy Park Ave. traffic.