Commercial Break

The Fabric Workshop and Vox Populi offer two alternatives to commercial art in one building.

by Robin Rice

Tom Friedman

Through Aug. 25, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1315 Cherry St., Fifth Floor, 215-568-1111

"Brat(Wurst): A Show of Chicago Artists"

Closed, Vox Populi (and other venues), 1315 Cherry St. Fourth Floor, 215-568-5513



Tom Friedman, Untitled (2001), composed of 256 identical photos.

Thirteen-fifteen Cherry St. is a good place to see art in non-commercial venues. Here, both the self-consciously bratty Vox Populi and the more sedate Fabric Workshop and Museum offer installation, video, performance — anything that is unlikely to become the tasteful appointments of home or office — as well as more conventional stuff.

In July, members of two Chicago artist-run spaces spiced up fourth-floor Vox Populi with mixed results. One flight up, Tom Friedman’s solo turn at the Fabric Workshop and Museum (through August 25) could easily masquerade as a group show.

Of course the FWM is a museum and a workshop. It not only assists artists like Friedman in realizing personal projects; it hand-prints artist-designed fabrics quite suitable for home or office. The FWM gift shop offers yardage as well as its own address books, ties, pillows and umbrellas.

Finely woven white cotton screened in lemon, orange and tangerine currently fills the long printing tables in the workroom. More is rolled onto cardboard tubes — all destined for installation in New York City’s Dia Center for the Arts. The bold retro-’70s biomorphs were designed by Jorge Pardo, whose own FWM residency produced a redesign of the FWM reception area and lounge with drapery walls in splashy greens.

After Pardo’s color-saturated space, Friedman’s gallery show is so understated that first impressions might suggest the visitor wandered into the wrong room. But stick around. Grab an "Exhibition Checklist" (near the entrance) and try to find all 14 works of art.

Near the door on a low table, you can’t miss an arrangement of obviously artificial flowers, the only bright colors around. Closer consideration reveals that the flowers, vase and table are a tour de force of illusionistic paper construction with a few added bits of material. The bees on the flowers — one is also exhibited elsewhere — are made of clay, wire, fuzz, paper, plastic and paint. They’re more like marvelous baubles than global statements. Or are they?

Friedman eschews the notion of "medium," yet process is intrinsic to his product. For example, an untitled work described on the checklist as "Hanging black paper poked with a pin" is just that. What sounds mundane or possibly stupid is transcended by the regularity and comprehensiveness of poking. Myriad tiny holes transform the thin sheet into a dark veil of Zen-like purity. The skill required to execute this work (unlike the marvelous bees) consists mostly of neatness. The artist’s hand is not a magical transformative ingredient. In this, Friedman follows Sol LeWitt, who does not make his work but merely writes the directions which produce it.

After the flowers, the most imposing object in the gallery is a project directed but not executed by the artist. As part of his FWM residency, Friedman organized the construction of a large self-portrait from 256 passport-like photographs of his face cut into 33,072 squares. The mouth area is occupied by many tiny smiling Friedman mouths. The eye areas, bee-like, filled with eyes. The colors and values of these units become pointillist or pseudo-digitized representations. Friedman’s done the same thing with cereal boxes and plans to complete his FWM residency with a fabric version of the portrait.

He once carved a self-portrait from an aspirin. The smallest work in this show ("untitled #8" on the checklist) is even smaller, a tiny full-length self-portrait. If you think you’ve found it on the wall, look at it from the side to be sure.

What defines Friedman’s oeuvre? Singularity of experience is one characteristic. In a videotaped lecture, viewable in Pardo’s lounge, Friedman describes a student epiphany in which he painted his studio white and removed everything from it, bringing in one object a day for observation.

A second peculiarity of his work is fantastical distortions of scale accompanied by transformations of material and form. Friedman’s carefully calculated construction undermines the certainties of perception; yet it reassures us by providing a sense of control and order, a bizarre order, but order nevertheless.

By dazzling us with his sleight-of-hand, Friedman persuades us to take his more reductive efforts seriously. These also succeed partly through context: a solo show in a pristine gallery. If you took the single thread painted to appear to be a thread removed from an American flag down one floor to Vox’s "Brat(Wurst)," it might challenge the lamest work there for inanity, although it’s provocative in the FWM context.

Galleries like Vox Populi used to be for fledgling artists ultimately seeking commercial representation. That’s still true, but some mature types who get public commissions or residencies (if they’re very lucky, at the FWM) also find artist-run galleries good places to show personal production. "Brat(Wurst)," the umbrella title for the second installment of an exchange show between three Philadelphia groups (Vox Populi, Base Kamp and Project Room) and two Chicago co-ops (The Butcher Shop and Seven Three Split), was concentrated in the Vox galleries with videos by appointment in the other two Philly locations.

Work ranged from puerile to engaging with notable invocations of electronic technology. Two memorable pieces by Rob Ray used tech to isolate and satirize sexual mechanics (or mechanical sex). A functioning videogame invites players to "use clitoral button to fire laser." Visitors interact with the installation Make Big Dreams Happen! by using a tongue or finger-mounted stylus to stimulate a Palm Pilot reproducing silly diagrams superimposed on a porn film. A coordinating sound component was unfortunately not working when I visited.

Paula Wilson could use a bit of Friedman’s obsessive attention to detail to refine her nicely conceived light boxes commenting on romance; while Jack Sloss’ audio Intoxication (Follow the Leader), a deliberately bumbling rap-along, is funny but thin.

Among the more successful traditional works were Jeff Mueller’s grime-edged collage Page #9, Rome at Night and Michael Lavery’s Rooftop paintings on torn asphalt. Deja vu dogged language-based efforts, such as Saverio Truglia’s Better Living T-shirts printed with product logos (Bounty, Cling Free, Future), though Mister Wolf’s penciled manifesto for slacker art Excuses and Affirmations for Casual Art and Easy Democracy ("It’s okay to do what has already been done or say what has already been said") hinted at the possibility of recycled personal vision.