Tom Friedman, Takeaway

LOWER LEVEL

Tom Friedman

Takeaway: Hermes Passing Through is a sculpture by critically acclaimed Tom Friedman whose work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fondazione Prada, Milan; South London Gallery; and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to name a few.

The second in a series of three pieces, Takeaway is a stainless-steel statue more than 13 feet tall and weighing nearly 1200 pounds. It depicts a modern -day Hermes – the lightning-fast Greek god of communication, humor, trickery, and travel – sprinting with a tall tower of take-out containers and foil pans precariouslybalanced atop his head.

Playfully portraying divinity weighed down under the mundane, Friedman juxtaposes the eternal and the ephemeral, the infinite and the infinitesimal, the transcendental, and the disposable. In doing so, he invites the viewer to examine their reality and priorities, “take away” from the sculpture their own meaning and share it with just a click of their phone, as ideas crisscross the globe with the speed of the Olympian deity himself.