Using a perverse inventory of life-sized and jumbo foodstuffs, Friedman constructs precarious sculptures that hover between familiar forms and complex abstractions. As both parody of and homage to large-scale abstract sculpture, Friedman works between the hand-made and the ready-made, infusing robust materiality with a trickster`s sensibility.

Link is a hyperbolic arc of connected salamis. Each individual sausage in the chain is actual size and cast from urethane foam, its surface a painted facsimile of the real object. The large calligraphic curve is canted, balanced and looms precipitously over the viewer.

Noodle is a sculpture made from enormous elbow macaroni strung together on a prodigious black thread. A hyper-sized and highly finished version of a kindergarten `art’ experience, “Noodle” offers an everyday counterpoint to the perfected forms of much twentieth century sculpture.

Also included is a series of companion drawings made from thick paste-like graphite brushed onto heavy weighted paper, portraying fictional balancing acts composed of both sausage and macaroni shapes. While suggesting traditional Sumi-e ink drawings, they illustrate a prankish world not entirely governed by gravity.

In describing Friedman’s work, artist Josiah McElheny states: ”... her sculptures… depict tricks and balancing acts, while arguing for the possible sexual connotation of everything. Structurally her work is like a history of sculpture from Bernini to Duchamp to Richard Prince; she uses modeling and moldmaking to make improbable conglomerations of everyday looking objects and sometimes `tells’ some pointed dirty puns. Friedman describes how illusion is a magic act of supreme tenuousness, maybe formed of some not so nice parts.”