Documents of Collapse
Sculptures by Jude Griebel and drawings by Lorraine Simms
Nov. 21, 2019 – Apr. 19, 2020
Sculptures of sympathetic figures merged with architectural and landscape elements, combining grotesque representations from historical painting and pop culture to create psychological and visual links between ourselves and our shifting environment.
Drawings that connect with key environmental issues, such as habitat loss and the extinction of animal species, proposing a reflective space from which to consider the spiritual dimension of animals, our intertwined histories and future evolution.
This exhibit featuring sculptures by Jude Griebel and drawings by Lorraine Simms, shows the contrast between the empirical, rational tone of scientific displays with metaphoric, poetic and deeply personal artwork.
Artists’ Biographies:
Jude Griebel is a Canadian sculptor working between Bergen, Alberta and Brooklyn, New York. His sculptures present sympathetic figures that are merged with architectural and landscape elements. In this liminal state, the characters speak to a range of anxieties from growth and mortality to planetary collapse, through scenes playing out on their detailed surfaces. Griebel completed an MFA in Ceramics and Sculpture from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada in 2014, and has completed numerous residencies including MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; HALLE 14 Center for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany and the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, USA, where he is currently in residence through 2019. A major sculptural installation of his work was featured in Future Station: The 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Alberta, and recent exhibitions include Esker Foundation, Calgary, AB; Redpath Museum, Montreal, QC; El Museo de Los Sures, Brooklyn, NY; Galerie Johannes Sturm, Nuremberg, Germany and The Spinnerei Archiv Massiv, Leipzig, Germany. Griebel is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant for emerging figurative artists and his projects have been supported by major grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts. His work has recently been featured in publications including Art + Design USA, Magenta Magazine and Canadian Art.
Lorraine Simms is a visual artist, educator and curator based in Montreal, Canada. Her artworks explore conceptions of nature and the wild by examining ways animals are presented and represented. Informed by the related pictorial traditions of still life and trompe l’oeil, her works expand the possibilities of these genres to underscore the deeper cultural and personal significance of animal artifacts. Simms holds an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal and an AOCA from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. Her artwork has been exhibited extensively across Canada and the United States, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec), the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Frederiction), and the Musée des beaux arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire (Québec). Her work has been the subject of many reviews and a Bravo TV documentary in the Shaping Art series. Simms is the recipient of numerous grants from the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. She has participated in notable residencies, including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (2017), and been granted privileged access to the private collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York (2018, 2019). She has held teaching positions at Concordia University and Dawson College in Montreal.
Jude Griebel
My recent work presents sculptures of hybrid bodies, whose anatomy is merged with their surroundings. These figures are compromised by situations of consumption, excess and disregard, played out on their dioramic surfaces. Bodies composed of dirt are paved over and strewn with litter; a figure formed of ocean water is covered in industrial vessels and tourist ships, plastic washing up at its feet. In these works, I am not so much interested in how waste is generated, but rather how we re-digest popular images of accumulation and environmental degradation, weaving them into the fabric of our subconscious. The sculptures embody these internalized and conflicted narratives of want and ruin, reifying them in monstrous and mythological proportions. Though informed by broader cultural desires and anxieties, the works resonate at a more personal level through the use of playful humor and autobiographical reference.
The figures I create build on the tradition of the grotesque, as a significant marker of the abject body throughout time. Through its distortion of the natural, this genre has long functioned as a cultural tool for visualizing and coming to terms with transition. In my works, I have combined grotesque representations from historical painting and pop culture to create psychological and visual links between ourselves and our shifting environment.
My works are handcrafted in painted laminate, wood and resin. They draw their technique from both natural science models and imaginary bodies constructed for theatrical effects and as costumes. Dioramic elements play an important role in my works, in regards to the material and conceptual staging of space. As a tool historically created for promoting fantastic illusion, the diorama was re‐adapted by science for the display of natural history. I am drawn to the overlaps between the presentation of scientific fact and imagined experience. By layering these opposed realities, I attempt to destabilize existing narratives about the interrelationship of our bodies to the surrounding world.
Click here to learn more about Jude’s work.
Lorraine Simms
My current drawings represent the shadows cast by a wide range of animal bones.
Conjuring immateriality and disappearance, these drawings connect with key environmental issues, such as habitat loss and the extinction of animal species. They propose a reflective space from which to consider the spiritual dimension of animals, our intertwined histories and future evolution.
In 2018 and 2019, I was given privileged access to the collections in the Mammalogy Department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. There, I began my drawing investigations by tracing shadows cast by the skeletal remains of many animals considered vulnerable, endangered or iconic. The demanding process of transforming these traced outlines into graphite drawings is one of distillation, whereby a fleeting moment becomes an uncanny form. During long periods of engagement, while no more than a few inches of paper are covered with even, graduated tones, I reflect on the enigma of these silent figures and the distance between myself and other animals comes into focus. These evocative penumbrae bring to light the overlooked, or the unseen, as shadows in natural history display cases often are.
Contrasting with the empirical, rational tone of scientific displays, my drawings are metaphoric, poetic and deeply personal. Mysterious shape-shifters, these works convey both the momentary and the vast expanse of geologic time. The journey from presence to absence is marked by fleeting shadows, fixed in place by the carbon dust that is the very stuff of life on our planet. They evoke a changing land where animal archetypes seem to flicker and dance on the periphery of awareness, signaling the gradual disappearance of the wild.
Click here to learn more about Lorraine’s work.
Exhibition Contributors:
Curators
Yukiko Stranger-Galey
Designers
Simi Wei
Derek Tan
Fabricators
Lesha Koop
Education Advisor
Angela Liu