Featured Review: Tom Friedman: REAM

Featured Review: Tom Friedman: REAM Noses, dates, dotted lines, the stars, sun, lollipops, and a vaguely copulating couple — the furious flotsam of all things daily and then some appear in thin black lines on a stark white background in this seemingly simple film loop, the latest installment of the New Media series. St. Louis-born Tom Friedman made 500 drawings on 500 pages of standard paper and animated the images in a 500-frame film sequence. Which is to say, a determined and meticulous order underscores disorder in this piece and as such reveals a brutally true portrait of the reasonably well-intended mind. The frenetic tumbleweed of lines — flying into concrete form and just as rapidly expiring in a knotted and confounding tangle — looks like any valiant attempt to make common sense: foiled by absurdity, carnality or just plain boredom. The linearity of time, mathematical rationale, lips, balloons, sex — whether you like it or not, it's all inextricably part of the same mix, Friedman seems to say. Through January 31 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Drive (in Forest Park); 314-721-0072 or www.slam.org. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sun. (10 a.m.-9 p.m. Fri.)

© Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman, American, born 1965; REAM, 2006; animated film; dimensions variable; courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery.

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