Throughout 2016 and 2017 Friedman focused largely on standalone sculptures. Once standing on Park Avenue, Looking Up (2015) was moved to Chicago's lakefront where it will permanently remain. In addition, a third edition of the piece was installed at the James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, Missouri. Friedman continued to work in a public forum, unveiling Huddle (2017), a 10x18 foot piece designed for the Dallas Cowboys installed at their training grounds. In late 2017, Friedman had a solo exhibition at Luhring Augustine entitled "Ghosts and UFOs: Projections for Well-Lit Spaces." The show, which consisted solely of projections, was a very dramatic shift from Friedman's previous chronology. While a departure from Friedman's past works, The New York Times praised it as, "effortlessly brilliant." In 2018, Friedman produced a large body of drawings for a solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery entitled, "Always The Beginning." The show was a reproduction and rendering of notebook pages from Friedman's sketchbooks spanning 30 years prior. In addition, Friedman released a new book of selected notes and sketches to accompany the work.