This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Tom Friedman, whose first New York show in six years opens this weekend at Chelsea’s Luhring Augustine gallery. Friedman is also included in “Lifelike,” a major exhibition opening this month at the Walker Art Center. The show will travel to the New Orleans Museum of Art, MCASD and to the Blanton.

Friedman has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the St. Louis Art Museum, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, the Fondazione Prada in Milan, and at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. In 2000 a mid-career survey traveled to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, the MCA Chicago, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Aspen Art Museum and to The New Museum in New York.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. You can stream the program through the player below.

Friedman and I discuss:

• His interest in trompe l’oeil;
• How a program at his high school helped him learn about art;
• His college studio, which he completely emptied and painted white so that he could start fresh;
• His breakthrough piece, which was made out of bubble gum. A lot of bubble gum;
• The work he made in response to 9/11 and why he insisted it be included in MOCA’s 2005 exhibition “Ecstasy: In and About Altered States”; and
• Money. That he made. I mean: That Friedman literally made.

In the show’s second segment, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra and I discuss “Reflections of the Buddha,” on view at the Pulitzer through March 10. The museum recently published its online catalogue for the show. Longtime MAN readers know that I think no one does this exhibition-specific micro-sites better than the Pulitzer: The pictures are fantastic and plentiful and there’s plenty of smart information available.

The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. It is released under this Creative Commons license. This week’s program was edited by Wilson Butterworth. For images of the works discussed on this week’s program, click through to the jump.

Tom Friedman, Untitled, 1990. Approximately 1,500 pieces of chewed bubble gum molded into a sphere and displayed at head height in a corner, hanging by its own stickiness.

Tom Friedman, Untitled (apples), 2012. A field of partially eaten apples made out of Styrofoam and paint.

Tom Friedman, Untitled, 2005. The work is eight-feet tall and the ‘tower’ is 16 inches by 16 inches.

Tom Friedman, Untitled (back of dollar), 2011.

Lodewik Susi, Still Life with Mice, 1619. Collection of the St. Louis Art Museum.

Tom Friedman, Untitled (video camera), 2012. A video camera and tripod was made entirely out of wood and painted stealth gray.

Tom Friedman, Untitled (kite), 2012. A figure carved from wood and painted stands on a patty made with sawdust and paint. The figure is flying a kite made out of wood. The kite string is painted monofilament thread.

Tom Friedman, Untitled (verisimilitude), 2012. A list of the word (verisimilitude) drawn on paper. Each word is slightly misspelled.Tom Friedman, Untitled (pixilated static), 2012. A sheet of Styrofoam was carved into a form simulating the curvature of an old television screen. A grid was then drawn onto the surface. A photograph of television static was pixilated, then printed as a value reference for squares cut out of paint adhered to the surface within the grid.

Tom Friedman, Untitled (Bee), 2007.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Buddha, 1995.

Detail of Standing Prince Shōtoku at Age Two (Shōtoku Taishi Nisaizō), c. 1292, Japan; Kamakura period, 1185 – 1333. Promised gift to the Harvard Art Museums.