Download PDF - David Fried

In bed with Lucy and Dolly
Mapping the temporal balance between water and air in the form of unique bubbles - which emerge
as a result of dynamic systems that do not follow linear and hierarchal patterns of organizational
behavior - Fried charts the fundamental economy of networks in nature. In varying chromatic tones,
Fried depicts strictly non-biological membranes that evoke a strong resemblance to primordial living
cells or biotech test-tube creations, and reminds us of just how fragile, yet adoptive the architecture
of life is.
Fried creates large gaseous vesicles in a totally darkened room using infrared goggles. At the decisive
moment before they fall, he photograms them onto grainless color sheet-film by triggering a colored
point-light source above. He captures the shadows of these fleeting objects to make an image on a
photosensitive support using only light and the light sensitive material. No camera or lens is used.
What we see in his enlarged C-prints are the latent shadows and spectral aberrations of these
transparent forms caused by the membrane’s curved surface. The object itself becomes the lens,
subtly bending the light and altering its own image.
The title refers to Lucy (the early hominid “Mother”), to us (the “Myth”), and to Dolly-the-Sheep
(what Fried ironically calls the “Missing Link”) in a dialogue that seeks orientation in a world in which
man has moved from adapting to and controlling their environment, to designing life itself to fit
it’s environment. With this work, Fried engages our sense of orientation in a world that has taken
a biomorphic journey from the Cambrian Sea to the Sea of Science and it’s playpens of genetic
engineering.
In bed with Lucy and Dolly No.2-12, No.17
2001, C-Print, Diasec, Aluminum