Independent 2026

Superhouse is pleased to present its first exhibition at Independent with a focused installation of eight works by Dan Friedman, all produced in 1985, a pivotal year in the artist’s practice when his artistic expression reached a new level of clarity and intensity.

Bringing together these rare works has been the result of several years of research and close collaboration with the artist’s estate, as well as with Friedman’s friends and contemporaries. The presentation centers on a moment when Friedman moved fluidly between design, art, and installation, developing a visual language that was at once rigorous, expressive, and deeply embedded in the cultural energy of downtown New York.

Emerging from a generation shaped by the postwar boom and its attendant ideals of stability, uniformity, and domestic order, Friedman’s work can be understood in part as a response to those constraints. Against the backdrop of the suburban dream and its prescribed notions of taste and lifestyle, his assemblages assert a different kind of language, one that is fragmented, improvisational, and open.

Formally and materially, the works reflect the conditions of 1980s New York: media-saturated, chaotic, politically charged, and culturally plural. Found elements, bold color, and unexpected juxtapositions come together in compositions that feel both deliberate and unstable, mirroring a city defined by constant movement and collision. In this context, Friedman’s practice does not simply blur boundaries between art and design, but actively resists fixed categories altogether.

Friedman’s artistic career was cut short by AIDS-related illness, leaving this body of work both finite and underexamined. While his contributions to graphic design have long been recognized, his parallel engagement with the East Village art scene has remained comparatively overlooked. Today, as institutions and collectors increasingly seek to recover overlooked narratives and reassess cross-disciplinary practices of the late twentieth century, Friedman’s work has taken on renewed relevance. Recent acquisitions by institutions including The Met and LACMA reflect this shift, positioning his work within a broader art historical context. In this moment of renewed attention, the opportunity to present this focused group of works is both timely and long overdue.

Superhouse’s presentation at Independent offers a rare opportunity to encounter this tightly held body of work as a cohesive group, illuminating a defining moment in Friedman’s career and the broader cultural landscape in which it emerged.

Installation photos by Zeshan Ahmed. Individual works images by Matthew Gordon.

About Dan Friedman
Dan Friedman (1945-1995) was an American artist, educator, and graphic designer whose work expanded the boundaries between graphic design, art, and furniture. Born in suburban Ohio, Friedman received a BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh and continued his studies at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm in Germany and the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel in Switzerland. 



Friedman began his career as a graphic designer, holding positions at Anspach Grossman Portugal Inc. and the international design firm Pentagram. He later taught at Yale University’s Graduate School of Art and Graduate School of Architecture, as well as at the State University of New York at Purchase. 



In the early 1980s Friedman shifted away from corporate design and academia to focus on an interdisciplinary art practice that combined sculpture, furniture, assemblage, and graphic language. His genre-defying works were exhibited at influential New York galleries including Tony Shafrazi Gallery, FUN Gallery, Art et Industrie, and Red Studio, as well as in Paris at Galerie Néotu and Galerie Kreo. 



Shortly before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1995, Friedman published Dan Friedman: Radical Modernism (1994), a manifesto-like reflection on his philosophy and work featuring contributions by Jeffrey Deitch and Alessandro Mendini. 



In 2023, The Art Institute of Chicago organized the first major museum retrospective dedicated to the artist, Dan Friedman: Stay Radical. Friedman’s work is held in prominent public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Gewerbemuseum Basel, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Modern Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.