Friedman Benda is pleased to present an expanded view of Faye Toogood’s Assemblage 7: Lost and Found, marking the influential British designer’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. First previewed in Los Angeles in 2022 and at Chatsworth House in 2023, Toogood’s acclaimed body of work makes its New York premiere. Showing her intimate process in a new light, Toogood uncovers new dimensions by poetically transforming her two chosen materials into pieces that capture and convey the essence of time.

Assemblage 7: Lost and Found is a personal exploration of what is lost, reworked, and reclaimed. With a focus on two mediums – English oak and Purbeck marble – Assemblage 7 is an exploration of the excellence of British craftsmanship and material landscape. Historically significant, both materials draw on the nation’s vernacular forms and traditions of making. Oak, a mainstay building material, is finished using shellacking, a time-honored fine furniture technique dating back to the 18th century. Purbeck, a rare limestone packed with shell fossils and quarried since antiquity, is sourced from a family-owned quarry on the Isle of Purbeck in southeast Dorset. It is hand-carved and chiseled, revealing the treasured stone’s stratigraphy.

A continuation of Toogood’s expansive way of working, Assemblage 7 represents her closest approach to traditional as well as modernist sculpture. While all pieces started as clay models, working with the actual materials felt, in Toogood’s words “like an archaeological dig: The block was a landscape, and I was finding my treasure within this block.” When carving, ancient material memories emerge into the light and take contemporary forms. Each piece, Plot, Cairn, Barrow, Hill, Hoard, and Lode represents undiscovered places and elements that had long been hidden —“something almost prehistoric that had been lost to time,” says Toogood.