Originating from New Mexico,  j.frede is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Previously living on the streets and train-hopping through the southwest, he frequently moved about before settling in San Francisco in 1995 where he became active in the arts.

Sounds, Performance and Curatorial

Beginning in the field of experimental music and performing/recording under the moniker Chapter 23, (a collaborative project), which incorporated film, still, and video projections into live performances and also produced pamphlets and street propaganda.  j.frede, presented his first installation Found Footage a combination of super 8 film loops and handmade slides, in San Francisco. Relocating to Denver, Colorado in 1996, j.frede began touring the United States and Europe exploring field recordings and using them as his primary sound source in live performances.

In 1999 j.frede opened the Chernobyl Tone Gallery, a space for experimental art in Denver, Colorado. With a focus on SoundArt, Chernobyl presented local, national, and international performers and musicians. The infamous bomb performance also took place at the Chernobyl Tone Gallery.

While living in Denver, j.frede organized and performed an abundant amount of live performances, including the Denver Atonal Festival, The Telluride Experimental Film Festival (Live Performances portion), Emerging Artists Performance Series (BMOCA), MNML series (MCA Denver), OpenLate Series (MCA Denver), and the Visual Soundings Series (MCA Denver).

After an extended stay in Europe during 2001,  j.frede relocated to Los Angeles. In 2002,  j.frede was a speaker with the Microsound Music panel discussion, organized by Rhizome, LA. Since then, he has presented compositions and surround sound performances with myriad events, such as the Beyond Music Festival (Beyond Baroque), A Day of Attention Festival (lowercase), LA Sounds (Goethe Institute), FREEEARS (Highways Performance Space), Field Effects #17 (SF, CA), and SOUNDWALK (FLOOD).

j.frede has performed in more than 12 countries throughout Europe and Scandinavia. His recent european tour, the a/v tour 2004, presented j.frede’s video series, Repetitions: a series of live performances that marked departure from his previous focus on music.

Photography, Video and Installation

As a visual artist, j.frede’s work is bound by conceptual guidelines that present mediums of photography, video, installation and sculpture. Since 1996,  j.frede haspresented in venues ranging from public streets to the solitude of Wyoming prairies, from the intimate galleries of Soundvision in Portland to The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

He presented 12 Note Composition For Sine’s as part of MCA Denver’s Visual Soundings Series in 2001, which was based on the composition technique of Arnold Schoenberg and combined different frequency sine wave tones from separate speakers to create a aural anomaly of cross oscillations.

In 2003, the Soundvision Gallery in Portland presented Selected Phonographies, a multi-channel audio installation that combined 24 speakers suspended from the ceiling, and field recordings of sounds heard from above. j.frede’s first solo show of visual works was presented at the Open Bookstore in Long Beach, California in 2006, and included a series of photographs, prints and sculpture works based on the Beat Generation.

The Repetitions series is a repetitive motion video and film series that began in 2002. These works concentrate on the slight inconsistencies in repetition from changes of light to subjects entering view challenging your understanding of what the source may or may not be. Composed as abstract shots, the videos inspect human perception of visual information and the hypnotic qualities of repetition.

Beginning in 2007,  j.frede begins photographic focus. Using both digital and traditional film, his photography work now is in the Best of 2008 Photography Annual, Published by Photographers Forum Magazine, and is published in ELLE magazine.

Following conceptual ideas ranging from the stillness of the night in cities to the reclamation of manmade structures by vegetation, j.frede is now compiling several photo series for upcoming exhibitions.