David Fried

David Fried (born 1962, New York City) is an American interdisciplinary, contemporary artist.

His stated conceptual focus is on dynamic non-linear and interdependent relationships found in nature and society, juxtaposed with the human desire to control, manipulate and predict outcomes. Fried’s works have been exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Major works have been included with artists Rebecca Horn, Robert Rauschenberg and Alexander Calder in an extensive traveling museum exhibition; "Drehen, Kreisen, Rotieren", and in "Genesis—The Art of Creation" with Joseph Beuys, Antony Gormley, Bruce Nauman at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Switzerland. His works are in international collections including a commissioned interactive installation on permanent view in Germany’s comprehensive kinetic art collection at the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen. Fried first became known to the New York established art world in the early 1980s through his activities as a painter in the street art group AVANT, AVANT on Wikipedia who alongside the then emerging artists Richard Hambleton, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat began the post-graffiti street art movement in NYC.Robinson, David (1990) Soho Walls – Beyond Graffiti, Thames & Hudson, NY, His efforts are mainly concentrated in Europe since relocating his studio from NYC to Düsseldorf in 1989.

Early life and development

Born to low income parents in Manhattan, Fried grew up in a small apartment with opaquely curtained windows. He began drawing at the age of seven, and states his motivation for exploring art was "to express my own windows on the world". In 1972 at the age of ten, he was accepted to the Art Students League of New York as one of the few minors in the institution's history, and studied oil painting in the Isaac Soyer class. His earliest influences were painters like Rembrandt, Dalí and Yves Tanguy. His earliest works show experimentation in a range of styles with a common subject matter about the nature of being. In 1974, he mounted his first public solo exhibition of 20 oil paintings in Rockefeller Plaza. His artistic influences widened through his acquaintances with jazz musicians, philosophers, scientists and pioneers of abstract expressionism. After attending the school of Music and Art, in 1979 he pursued his art career as a painter with a focus on human dynamic relationships, portrayed in dysfunctional urban scenes. In 1981, Fried co-pioneered a guerilla street art collective named AVANT, leading to over forty gallery exhibitions of his work between 1981 and 1984 in SoHo, the East Village and the Lower East Side. In 1985, Fried began to investigate the photographic medium and its artistic potential from a painter’s perspective. To explore the highly technical medium, he freelanced at several NY photo labs to learn and use their facilities for his own artworks. In 1989 he moved his studio and own color photo labor to Düsseldorf, Germany. There he began developing a form of the old Gum bichromate technique—a process that makes artist-pigments photosensitive—with which he produced six years of large-scale photographic paintings. In the late 1990s, he expanded his artistic oeuvre into a multidisciplinary approach employing sculpture, interactive objects and photographic works. By 1996, he began his research into the color photogram and interactive art. According to an interview from 2001, it took Fried two years to amass the tools and skills necessary to create his first multimedia interactive work. In 1998, he publicly exhibited his first interactive "Self Organizing Still-Life" sculpture at the art fair "Art Forum Berlin". By 2000, there is no more imagery of the human form to be found in his work. His earlier philosophical focus on human interdependent dynamic relationships is reduced to their intrinsic qualities as such, and how various manifestations are both initiated and experienced on the global scale. His various works since the turn of the century also became more symbolic and minimalist in appearance. In 2003 his analogue photography series of "rainscapes" began, in 2004, a sculpture series titled "Stemmers", and in 2009 he commenced a series of stainless steel sculptures titled "Globalexandria". In 2012 he first employed computerized generative graphics combined with physical interactive kinetic objects that merge the distinctions between the "real" and the "virtual" in one artwork.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

2013 Spheres of Influence II, SPAM Contemporary, Düsseldorf, Germany 2012 Troner Art, Stilwerk Düsseldorf, Germany 2009 Position Probable, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, Australia 2009 Spheres of Influence, Gallery Samuelis Baumgarte, Bielefeld, Germany 2008 Ultimate Photography, Gallery Monos, Liège, Belgium 2007 Far from Equilibrium, Sara Tecchia Roma New York, New York, USA 2007 Living Variables, Galerie Kasten, Mannheim, Germany 2005 Distribution of Fate. Regional Museum Xanten, Germany 2003 Missing Link, Gallery Adler, Frankfurt, Germany 2001 Night of the Museums, Jörg Immendorff harbor penthouse, Düsseldorf, Germany 1990 Gallery Martin Kudlek, Cologne, Germany

Group exhibitions (selection)

2013 Grosse Kunst Austellung NRW, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany 2011 Wasser, Kunsthalle Messmer, Germany Google Science, Google HQ, Palo Alto, CA 2010 Agenda, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, Australia Schaulager, Hans Peter Zimmer Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany 2009 Fall Forward, Sara Tecchia Roma New York, New York Uber's Sofa II, Tröner Art, Düsseldorf, Germany 2008 Bildertausch 3 - Collection Marli Hoppe-Ritter, Kunstmuseum Ritter, Germany 2007 Genesis - The Art of Creation - Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland Sculpture in Motion - Atlanta Botanical Garden, USA Galerie Kasten, Mannheim, Germany Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany 2006 Bewegung im Quadrat, Commission for Permanent Collection, Kunstmuseum Ritter, Germany A Summer Show, Sara Tecchia Roma New York, New York, USA Galerie Kasten, Mannheim, Germany Plastic Fantastic, The Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts, NJ, USA Joint Venture, Richard Nelson & Pence Gallery, University of CA. at Davis, USA 2005 Himmelsbilder, Dommuseum Salzburg, Austria 2004 Skywatch, K26, Frankfurt, Germany Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany 2003 Kunst in Bewegung, traveling exhibition: Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany 2002 Kunst in Bewegung, Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Germany Kunst in Bewegung, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, Germany Kunst in Bewegung, Kunstmuseum im Kulterspeicher Würzburg, Germany Gleicher Ort Neue Zeit, Düsseldorf, Germany 2001 Illusions in Space, Sculpturesite Gallery, Berkeley, USA. 2000 Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Permanent collection & display 1998 Martin Kudlek Fine Art, Aachen, New York Artists, Cologne, Germany 1997 Martin Kudlek Fine Art, Aachen, Cologne, Germany 1993 Amerika Haus, Cologne, Germany 1992 Das Bild im Bild, Articom, Frankfurt, Germany Visionäre Schweiz, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany ID Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany 1985 The B.A.D.Gallery, NYC, USA 1984 Gallery 51X, NYC, USA 1983 AVANT, Gabrielle Bryers Gallery, NYC, USA LowerEastSide Street Art, GuGu Ernesto Gallery, Cologne, Germany LowerEastSide Street Art, Galleria Lo Zebbetto, Milano, Italy AVANT - Guerilla Art, Gallery 51X, NYC, USA Terminal New York, Brooklyn Army Terminal, NYC, USA Avant and friends, N.Y.U. Contemporary Art Gallery, NYC, USA 1982 The Monument Redefined, Gowanus Memorial Art Yard, NYC, USA. Stolen Show, curated and exhibited, Alain Bilhaud Gallery, NYC, USA 51Xpressionism, Gallery 51X, NYC, USA 1981 The Monumental Show, Gowanus Memorial Art Yard, NYC, USA. International art fairs 1998-2011

Art Stage Singapore, Art Forum Berlin, Art Frankfurt, Art Brussels, Scope New York, Scope London, Art Cologne, Art Basel,

Scope East Hampton, Wynward Miami, Paris, Paris Photo, Melbourne Art, Photo London, Art.Fair Köln, Liste Berlin, Liste Köln.

Bibliography

2012 ArtInvestor Magazine, No.06/12, "Dynamische Kunstobjekte" Dominique Dabrowski. pp. 69,70 2010 West Side Philosophers Inc, "Fatal Numbers—Why count on Chance" by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. pp. 1, 4, 6, 10, 36, 50, 52, cover 2009 Museum Ritter "Hommage to the Square - works from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter collection 1915 to 2009". , pp. 111, 112 2008 PBA - Public Broadcasting Atlanta, "Sculpture in Motion", Program & Interview, PBA TV-broadcast July 2008 2008 Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, Kirsten & Lukas Feireiss, "Architecture of Change—Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment", , pp. 1, 2, 311, 312 2007 Zentrum Paul Klee - Bern. Exhibition catalogue "Genesis—the Art of Creation" Curated by Fabienne Eggelhöfer. pp. 50, 51, 54, 55, cover 2007 Vernissage-TV, review by solo exhibition: "Far from Equilibrium" at Sara Tecchia Gallery New York. 2007 Saatchi Online, Trent Morse, "David Fried at Sara Tecchia Gallery, New York". 10.18.2007 2007 dART magazine, Christopher Hart Chambers, "Confined Chaos—Life according to David Fried", Vol.9-No.2, pp. 25–27 2007 Meier Magazine, Interview with Eva Mayer, "Kontrol und Chaos", November 2007, pp. 86 2007 Manheimer Morgen, Barbara Foester, "Weniger ist eben oft viel mehr", 09.11.2007, pp. 31 2007 Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, "Into the Nature", , pp. 192–195 2005 Rheinische Post, Magdalena Kröner, "Blubbern voller Bedueutung", 28.12.2005, pp. 46 2005 Europa Sur, review by José Luis Tobalina, "La imagen fotográfica como filosofía", 29.10.2005, pp. 64, cover 2005 Sur, review by Sandra Balvín, "Un mundo por descubrir", 29.10.2005, pp. 12 2004 NYArts magazine, International edition, Christopher Hart Chambers, "Spring Picks", Vol.9-No.5/6, pp. 88. 2003 World of Art Magazine, Vol.3-No.6, Picks, pp. 92 2002 Frankfurter Rundschau, review by Annette Wollenhaupt, "Von Begegnungen und fragilen Verbindungen", 08.08.2002, pp. 39 2001 Rheinische Post, Sigrid Blomen-Radermacher, "Kunst nach Stammzellen-Art", 08.05.2001, pp. 47 2001 Westdeutscher Rundfunk- WDR, Kulturszene TV review of "Kunst Köln". WDR TV-broadcast November 2001 1998 TV Berlin, review of "Art Forum Berlin". TV-broadcast October 2, 1998

Collections

Kunstmuseum Ritter, Germany Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen, Germany Victonia, Frankfurt

Books

David Fried, Rainscapes – photography, Verlag Poller 2004, David Fried, Self Organizing Still life – sound stimulated interactive sculptures, Verlag Poller 2006, David Fried, In bed with Lucy and Dolly – photograms, Verlag Poller 2004, David Fried, Far from Equilibrium / Fern vom Gleichgewicht, Kerber Verlag, 2018, David Fried, Far from Equilibrium , on Lambert und Lambert, Düsseldorf

References

External links

Interactive artwork "Self Organizing Still-Life" videos on Vimeo Zentrum Paul Klee "Genesis-the art of creation" VerissageTV, solo exhibition "Far from Equilibrium" at Gallery Sara Tecchia, NYC. David Fried on Artfacts.net David Fried 1980's NYC street art