Confounding material expectations through skilful trompe d’oeil, ’Big Bang' manifests Friedman’s inconceivably precise craftsmanship and deadpan sense of humour. ‘Big Bang' recreates the textured grain of the artist’s sketchbook in photorealistic detail. Recalling ‘1000 Hours of Staring’ (1992-97), which consists of a blank sheet of paper at which Friedman did indeed spend 1000 hours staring, these works reintroduce a personal experience of committed labour into what seems at first to be produced without conscious consideration. By teasingly highlighting the artist’s presence, such works stake a claim to the power of the artist’s thought to generate meaning from chaos: with a ‘bang’.
