David Fried (born 1962,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

) is an American

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

ist. His stated conceptual focus is on dynamic

non-linear In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many other ...

and

interdependent Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

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 Rebecca Horn (born 24 March 1944, in Michelstadt, Hesse) is a German visual artist, who is best known for her installation art, film directing, and her body modifications such a''Einhorn'' (Unicorn) a body-suit with a very large horn projecting ve ...

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

and

Alexander Calder Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his ...

in an extensive traveling museum exhibition; "Drehen, Kreisen, Rotieren", and in "Genesis—The Art of Creation" with

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

Antony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the ''Angel of the North'', a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; ''Another Pla ...

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

at the

Zentrum Paul Klee The Zentrum Paul Klee is a museum dedicated to the artist Paul Klee, located in Bern, Switzerland and designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It features about 40 percent of Paul Klee's entire pictorial oeuvre. In 1997, Livia Klee-Meyer, P ...

, 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 The art world comprises everyone involved in producing, commissioning, presenting, preserving, promoting, chronicling, criticizing, buying and selling fine art. It is recognized that there are many art worlds, defined either by location or alt ...

in the early 1980s through his activities as a

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

in the

street art Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art. Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant graff ...

group

AVANT AVANT, also known as AVANT street art guerrilla collective, was the artist group active in New York City from 1980 to 1984. By 1984 AVANT had produced thousands of acrylic on paper paintings and plastered them on walls, doors, bus-stops and gallerie ...

, AVANT on Wikipedia who alongside the then emerging artists

Richard Hambleton Richard Art Hambleton (June 23, 1952 – October 29, 2017) was a Canadian artist known for his work as a street artist A street artist is a person who makes art in public places. Street artists include portrait artists, caricaturists, graffiti ...

Keith Haring Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...

and

Jean-Michel Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al ...

began the post-graffiti street art movement in NYC. His efforts are mainly concentrated in Europe since relocating his studio from NYC to

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

in 1989.

Early life and development

Born to low income parents in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, 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 The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

as one of the few minors in the institution's history, and studied oil painting in the

Isaac Soyer Isaac Soyer (April 26, 1902 – July 8, 1981) was a Russian-born American social realist painter and educator. His art work often portrayed working-class people of New York City in his paintings. Biography He was born as Isaac Schoar on April 26, ...

class. His earliest influences were painters like

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

, Dalí and

Yves Tanguy Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (, ), was a French surrealist painter. Biography Tanguy, the son of a retired navy captain, was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Affa ...

. His earliest works show experimentation in a range of styles with a common subject matter about the nature of

being In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...

. In 1974, he mounted his first public solo exhibition of 20 oil paintings in

Rockefeller Plaza Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commerce, commercial buildings covering between 48th Street (Manhattan), 48th Street and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco ...

. His artistic influences widened through his acquaintances with jazz musicians, philosophers, scientists and pioneers of

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

. 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

collective named

, leading to over forty gallery exhibitions of his work between 1981 and 1984 in

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

, the East Village and the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

. 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

, Germany. There he began developing a form of the old

Gum bichromate Gum bichromate is a 19th-century photographic printing process based on the light sensitivity of dichromates. It is capable of rendering painterly images from photographic negatives. Gum printing is traditionally a multi-layered printing process, ...

technique—a process that makes artist-pigments

photosensitive Photosensitivity is the amount to which an object reacts upon receiving photons, especially visible light. In medicine, the term is principally used for abnormal reactions of the skin, and two types are distinguished, photoallergy and phototoxicity. ...

—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 A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The usual result is a negative shadow image th ...

and

interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...

. 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

dynamic relationships is reduced to their intrinsic qualities as such, and how various manifestations are both initiated and experienced on the

global Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

scale. His various works since the turn of the century also became more symbolic and

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

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 Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

kinetic Kinetic (Ancient Greek: κίνησις “kinesis”, movement or to move) may refer to: * Kinetic theory of gases, Kinetic theory, describing a gas as particles in random motion * Kinetic energy, the energy of an object that it possesses due to i ...

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 Jörg Immendorff (14 June 1945 – 28 May 2007) was a German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor. He was a member of the art movement ''Neue Wilde''. Early life and education Immendorff was born in Bleckede, Lower Saxony, n ...

harbor penthouse, Düsseldorf, Germany * 1990 Gallery Martin Kudlek, Cologne, Germany

Group exhibitions (selection)

* 2013 Grosse Kunst Austellung NRW,

Museum Kunst Palast The Kunstpalast, formerly Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf is an art museum in Düsseldorf. History The roots of the museum go back around 300 years. In 1932, the collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Academy of Art) was housed in the Kunstmus ...

, Düsseldorf, Germany * 2011 Wasser, Kunsthalle Messmer, Germany * Google Science,

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

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 -

, Bern, Switzerland * Sculpture in Motion -

Atlanta Botanical Garden The Atlanta Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located adjacent to Piedmont Park in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Incorporated in 1976, the garden's mission is to "develop and maintain plant collections for the purposes of display, ...

, 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 Kunstmuseum is a German word literally translated into English as "art museum". It may refer to: * KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, art museum in Aalborg, Denmark * Kunstmuseum Basel, the largest art museum in Basel, Switzerland * Kunstmuseum ...

, 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 The ''America House'' (Amerika Haus, plural: Amerika Häuser) is an institution developed following the end of the Second World War to provide an opportunity for German and Austrian citizens to learn more about American culture and politics, and e ...

, Cologne, Germany * 1992 Das Bild im Bild, Articom, Frankfurt, Germany * Visionäre Schweiz,

, Düsseldorf, Germany * ID Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany * 1985 The B.A.D.Gallery, NYC, USA * 1984 Gallery 51X, NYC, USA * 1983

, 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 Stage Singapore was an Asian contemporary art fair held every January in Singapore with a focus on Southeast Asian art. History Art Stage Singapore was founded by Lorenzo Rudolf. Rudolf initially rejected a proposal to launch Art Basel in Sin ...

, Art Forum Berlin, Art Frankfurt, Art Brussels, Scope New York, Scope London,

Art Cologne Art Cologne is an art fair held annually in Cologne, Germany and was established in 1967 as ''Kölner Kunstmarkt''. It is regarded as the world's oldest art fair of its kind. The fair runs for six days and brings together galleries from more than ...

Art Basel Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

, 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 Hans Magnus Enzensberger (11 November 1929 – 24 November 2022) was a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Andreas Thalmayr, Elisabeth Ambras, Linda Quilt and Giorgio Pellizzi. Enzensberger was regarde ...

. pp. 1,4,6,10,36,50,52,cover * 2009 ''

Museum Ritter A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that Preservation (library and archival science), cares for and displays a collection (artwork), collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, culture, cultu ...

'' "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 ''

- 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 The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Da ...

'', Trent Morse, "David Fried at Sara Tecchia Gallery, New York". 10.18.200

* 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 ''Rheinische Post'' is a major German regional daily newspaper published since 1946 by the ''Rheinische Post Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH'' company, and headquartered in Düsseldorf. The Post is especially dominant in the western part of North Rhine- ...

'', Magdalena Kröner, "Blubbern voller Bedueutung", 28.12.2005, pp. 46 * 2005 ', 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 The ''Frankfurter Rundschau'' (FR) is a German daily newspaper, based in Frankfurt am Main. It is published every day but Sunday as a city, two regional and one nationwide issues and offers an online edition (see link below) as well as an e-pa ...

'', review by Annette Wollenhaupt, "Von Begegnungen und fragilen Verbindungen", 08.08.2002, pp. 39 * 2001 ''

'', Sigrid Blomen-Radermacher, "Kunst nach Stammzellen-Art", 08.05.2001, pp. 47 * 2001 ''

Westdeutscher Rundfunk Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (''West German Broadcasting Cologne''; WDR, ) is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the conso ...

- WDR'', Kulturszene TV review of "Kunst Köln". WDR TV-broadcast November 2001 * 1998 ''

TV Berlin Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, e ...

'', 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

VerissageTV, solo exhibition "Far from Equilibrium" at Gallery Sara Tecchia, NYC.

David Fried 1980's NYC street art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fried, David Living people Contemporary sculptors Sculptors from New York (state) 1962 births American contemporary artists Postmodern artists American multimedia artists The High School of Music & Art alumni