Artist Bio

Born 1962 in New York City, David Fried found his calling early on. He was the first minor to be accepted into the adult classes at the Art Students League. Soon after his departure from the academic world, he co-founded an artist's consortium known as "Avant", which along with Haring and Basquiat were major contributors to the emerging New York street-art scene. His notorious illegal public paintings led to inclusions in dozens of gallery exhibitions in Soho and the East Village throughout the early to mid '80s.

Though painting was his primary medium, in 1980 Fried became aware of photography and it's strengths as an expressive form of art. His hands-on research led to such a panache of traditional, state of the art and invented photographic techniques that several top commercial photographers and photo labs in NYC hired him as a consultant. He simultaneously pursued his art and studied philosophy, primitive mythology, life sciences and aspects of technology and mass media in our cultures.

In 1989, shortly before the Berlin wall came down, Fried moved his studio to Germany where he sought Europe's entwined cultural distinctions and social dialogue to inspire and explore his increasingly scientific and philosophic art. There his work developed from painting and photography into his own morphology of techniques and processes such as "light sensitive paint" and "interactive granite" to depict and fabricate his conceptual explorations. Since then his artwork has followed several distinct avenues that are disparate in actualization yet united in sensibility.

His international career began in earnest several years after relocating to Europe. Soon after he was invited to use Jorg Immendorff's open studio for a one night exhibition and performance for the "Night of the Museums" in Düsseldorf. Through his gallery representatives he has become a veteran of the European and American art fair circuit. His work has been spotlighted in the critically acclaimed traveling museum exhibition "Kunst in Bewegung" which included artists such as Rauschenberg, Horn, Uecker, Calder and others. Fried has mounted several solo exhibitions in galleries, institutions and museums across Europe and is in various collections including a permanent installation at Germany's most notable kinetic art collection in Gelsenkirchen's art museum. In 2008, Fried has shown (and remains in the permanent collection) of the Museum Ritter and was part of "Genesis the Art of Creation", which included works by Chuck Close, Bruce Nauman, Antony Gormley, Joseph Beuys, Piet Mondirian, Wassily Kandinsky, Sol Lewitt et alter at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland. He unveiled an SOS at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens on view through the end of the year and has completed various commissions throughout Europe and the United States.