JEFF GRANT

Park

Exhibition dates: February 6 - March 22, 2025

Reception: Thursday, February 6th, 6-8PM

SITUATIONS

515 W 20th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011

SITUATIONS is proud to announce Park, a solo presentation of new works by Jeff Grant. Through new drawings and photography, Grant considers how we experience and interpret representations of public space. Materially, the works do not disguise their making: exacting drawings in colored pencil bare every mark, and a photo of a park bench is affixed directly to the wall with pins that approximate the bench's rivets. Conceptually, the works are slippery, refusing to adhere to any single interpretation.

Jeff Grant has devoted much of his career to exploring how objects attain meaning, walking a steady line through the ontological minefield separating the physical world and our perception of it. His latest exhibition delves into how age influences our interpretation of the world around us, centering on a public space that carries different significance in childhood and adulthood—the park.

At first glance, the architectural precision of Grant’s compositions may impart an austere sensibility. However, what he takes most seriously is playfulness. In his meticulous drawings, slides, seesaws, monkey bars, and swings are reduced to their simplest geometric forms. Instantly recognizable, these structures oscillate between evoking a child’s delight in the pure essence of play and an adult’s tendency to abstract the world into digestible shapes. 

In other works, science-fiction objects swell to titanic proportions, creating a dissonance with their natural surroundings and blurring the boundaries between distinct spaces. Grant further complicates these delineations by juxtaposing the natural world with what he calls his “Outdoor structures”—enigmatic forms that take on a charged, alien, and  often sexual energy. Though their meaning remains elusive, they tap into a visceral recognition, where "you know it when you see it."

Grant is suspicious of our perception of how we experience the world, challenging the assumed division between childhood innocence and adult seriousness. Instead, he suggests that we have much to gain from reconsidering our matured view of our younger selves. As Grant states, “There is no such thing as childhood innocence, but there is a great deal of adult naiveté.”

• Text by Jane Taylor

JEFF GRANT (b. 1975) lives and works between Berlin and New York. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and at Goldsmiths College in London in 2000. His work has been shown throughout Europe and the United States: Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich; Thomas Erben Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, Whitespace, and Team Gallery all in NYC.  In 2022, Grant presented Murmur, a two-person exhibition with William Burton Binnie, at Keisjers Koning, Dallas, TX. Recent group exhibitions include Real Thing at Lane Meyer Projects, Denver, CO; Circus of Books at Fierman Gallery, NY; The Unspeakable: A Dark Show, organized by Re: Art Show at the Pfizer Building, NY. His work is included in private collections throughout the US and Europe.

SITUATIONS is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 11AM to 6PM.  We will announce our holiday schedule soon, please check the gallery website for updates. For press inquiries, please contact Renee Delosh at renee@situations.us. To request a sales preview, or for general questions, please contact info@situations.us.