Download PDF - David Fried

Stemmers
Fried has coined the term “Stemmer” as a personifying name for stem cell creations. Currently the
stem cell is the most promising yet controversial programmable self-reproducing building block on
a cellular level, which in the hands of the genetic engineer has become the absolute malleable
“bio-porcelain” of choice at the turn of this century.
His newest three-dimensional works titled Stemmers are a series of geometrical sculptures that
portray his vision of stem cell creations with a kind of prepubescent innocence. They look like young
or undeveloped beings, easy to personify and almost friendly in appearance. Although there is a clear
association to organic cell clusters, Fried actually follows a basic law of economy found in complex
bubbles to hand-build and facet the sculpture’s surface. The sharp-networked angles formed by
intersecting spheres of varying size result in dynamic shapes that in spite of their clean mathematical
origin appear biological, and possess an abstract yet curiously personal character. Each Stemmer
sculpture contains several “faces” when viewed from different angles, which easily suggest multiple
abstract personalities.
If Fried’s Stemmers are perceived as statues of premature invitro creations, then one must think:
what might they grow up to be? Life-savers like skin or liver? Patented spare parts or estranged
new breeds? His Stemmers also appear to have gender, which is enforced through their intended
resemblance to figures from the stone age such as the “Venus of Willendorf”, which depicts an
anatomically exaggerated female form, or other phallic icons found in many Paleolithic cultures.
As in many of Fried’s other works, the artist presents us with minimalist symbolic imagery that
suggests a fundamental shift from mythological to scientific beliefs, and calls attention to the
manipulative processes that are now deeply rooted in our cultures. By resurrecting and modernizing
humankind’s oldest fertility icons - in an era whereby applied technologies are trumping the oldest
form of reproduction and evolution - with fertility icons of a synthetic nature for future generations,
Fried confronts us with our desire and ability to alter nature’s course, and perhaps our future
evolutionary process.