Jake Fried (American, b. 1984) is a painter turned animator who creates stop-motion films by repeatedly reworking a single ink drawing.,,,Using ink and white correction fluid, sometimes adding gouache, collage, and coffee, he alters and photographs the same surface frame by frame until the image evolves into a hallucinatory, mind-bending animation.,,He lives and works in Boston.,
Fried began his career as a painter. As he layered and modified images, he became more interested in how an image changes over time than in the finished painting, and shifted his practice toward animation.,,Working on a single sheet, he can spend months on one piece, building it from more than a thousand photographed frames for roughly a minute of film. He works without a fixed plan, letting each piece determine what comes next.Fried has discussed Franz Kafka's influence on his work and his attraction to essentialist work.
Titles across his catalogue, including Brain Wave, The Deep End, Night Vision, and Raw Data, center on perception and attention.Avant Arte released the print editions Open Eyes (Signal) and Open Eyes (Flower), translating his hand-drawn animations into physical prints.,,The Open Eyes (Flower) edition is built from eight individual frames of one animation, combined into a three-part monochromatic lenticular and paired with an NFT of the same artwork.Discussing his practice, Fried has said “Art is essentially a communication device. It's about humanity. This is what I love about technology and the internet”, and that in the NFT space, “we're all in this together”. He has described art-making, teaching, and talking about art as parts of one practice, saying “My life is about making my art, teaching art, talking about art”. Fried's stated ambition is to erase the divide between traditional, physical, and NFT-based art, “to tie the traditional and the physical and the NFTs and make it all one thing”.
His films have screened at the Tate Modern and the Sundance Film Festival, and he has produced commissioned animation for Coldplay, Netflix, and Adult Swim.,,,In 2022 his work appeared in a benefit NFT sale for MAPS at Christie's.Fried teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.,,,
