Jeff Grant

Andreas Grimm and Adrian Rosenfeld are pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of New York artist Jeff Grant. He was born 1975 in New York and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Goldsmiths College in London.

Jeff Grant will be presenting ink on mylar drawings, graphite on paper drawings, and large installations side-by-side. In the main exhibition space a gigantic, hand-knit krake (or giant squid), made of white synthetic yarn, sprawls languorously. Throughout the history of human seafaring, the krake has been the horror of every navy, coming from the deep and pulling down ships with its many arms. The perfect subject for mythology, the krake was known only through legends of disaster, shredded carcasses washed up on beaches and semi-digested remains in the stomachs of whales. As underwater exploration has improved, however, the krake has finally been observed in its natural environment. Now, floppy and pathetic, the myth lies down on the gallery’s floor--a legend is gone, victim of science. Or not? The installation is supplemented with two graphite drawings on graphite-colored paper. Like the krakes in the sea, the subject disappears on the paper, ghostlike, adelomorphous, ineffable in scientific forms.

In the downstairs gallery a series of ink on mylar drawings is concerned with questioning the perception value of scientific display methods. From old biology books about the genealogy of trees, the drawings precisely show the shape of different trees. Grant reproduces meticulously the growth patterns of oaks, larches, cherry trees and elms. Sometimes the Latin scientific name of the tree is also included. Despite their accuracy, the drawings hide more than they show as Jeff Grant plays on the apparent analogy of the tree form. Reduced to stark, leafless shapes, they almost become undistinguishable.

Following approaches of scientific categorization, Grant’s drawings and installations seem to be as fragile as pinned butterflies. They are evidence of a holistic world view and of the wish to make the phenomena of the visual world become apparent with systematic study. But instead of making something more visible, the drawings obscure their subject. Their readability and accuracy turn against the initial impulse of scientific description. In between pseudo-scientific gesture and the Romantic emotionality epitomized by Caspar David Friedrich, there opens up an intellectual field of opposing poles. The tree itself, a Romantic topos with humanoid features, resists the objectifying access.

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Jeff Grant