Charley Friedman was born and bred in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Since 1996 he has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY.  Friedman received his Masters of Fine Arts from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University in addition to The Skowhegan School.  Friedman has exhibited and performed at numerous galleries and institutions including PS1/MoMA, Gallery Diet, Sarah Meltzer Gallery, Jack Tilton and The Queens Museum.   Mr. Friedman has completed numerous residencies including The MacDowell Colony, Fountain Head, Cooper Union and The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.    In 2006, Friedman received a fellowship from the Pollack/Krasner Foundation.   In 2007, he had his first museum survey at The Sheldon Museum of Art.  Selected collections include: The Brooklyn Museum, New York Public Library, Stanford University, Sheldon Museum, Goldman Collection.  Mr. Friedman is represented by Miami based Gallery Diet.

The glue that binds my work together is humor.  For me, it is a powerful psychological conduit that mirrors and reflects our humanness.  The constant thread that purveys my work is the discordance between what we know and feel.  The crux of my art is to explore the absurd, tragic and contradictory nature of living that humor can uniquely portray from multiple yet equal tangents. Because humor has no material preference, I have the freedom to explore different materials and processes.  I produce sculptures, installations, photographs, videos and performances equally.  For me it is ultimately this emotional "ah hah" that I desire over other formal qualities.  I want my viewer to feel before he or she thinks.