Michael Fried (b. 1998, New York, NY. Lives and works in New York City)

Drawing from the traditions of Renaissance still life, Spanish bodegón painting, Morandi, Philip Guston, Nicolas Party, and even Looney Tunes, Fried stages everyday objects within carefully constructed compositions. His works balance structure and instability, revealing the persistent human desire to create meaning, harmony, and control within an inherently uncertain world.

In his own words, "My paintings construct still life scenes that function more like rehearsals than depictions of reality. I build imagined environments where objects are removed from their usual context and placed into controlled environments where their usual behavior no longer applies. Fruit-like forms, geometric shapes, shadows, and fragments of architecture repeat throughout the work like a cast of actors moving between staged spaces. The paintings occupy a space between the familiar and the artificial. Scale shifts, color behaves unnaturally, and objects refuse to fully settle into something that is completely identifiable. Nothing appears to be happening, but the paintings hold onto the tension that something could. By stripping objects of function and resisting fixed meaning, the paintings become frozen rehearsal spaces where forms simply exist beside one another without the pressure of solution or final performance."

Michael Fried is a recent graduate from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and continues to live and work in NY. 

Exhibitions/Fairs with the Gallery

Emerging Frequencies, New York | July 2026

Kiaf SEOUL Art Fair, SARAHCROWN New York | Sept 2026